


Left Behind

by squintly



Series: Iteration [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon Divergence - Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Clint2000, M/M, Suicide Attempt, Thor: The Dark World Spoilers, timeloop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 19:51:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 25
Words: 25,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3867709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squintly/pseuds/squintly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malekith is coming to town, and Loki's dragging Clint along for the ride. </p><p>Direct sequel to Iteration.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I started writing this after Dark World came out, finished the first draft a few weeks after Winter Soldier, and only now am I actually publishing it. This thing is my god damn magnum opus. I hope you enjoy it, cause it's three in the morning and I haven't slept in two days.

“So,” Loki said conversationally as Clint turned the page, “would you like to talk about it?”

Clint looked up from his dog-eared copy of _Prisoner of Azkaban_ and blinked. “Pardon?”

“Philip and his little band of adventurers, and your exclusion therefrom,” Loki replied, his long pale fingers tracing intricate patterns in the rarified air of his cell. “It’s obviously on your mind, you’ve mispronounced Hermione’s name three times in the last half hour.”

“How did you—“ Clint began, then stopped, letting a frustrated huff through his nose. “You know what? Screw it. From now on, I’m just going to assume you know everything.”

Loki grinned one of his lopsided grins. “Perish the thought. I have enough trouble keeping things straight as things stand, thank you very much.”

Clint rolled his eyes all the way back to the page in front of him. They’d had this conversation before, and even after all this time, Clint still didn’t really believe him. 

A year and a half ago, a portal had opened up before Clint’s eyes, and before he knew what was going on, a god stepped through, skin and bones and eyes gone dead with pain, and _wrong_ in a way Clint still couldn’t completely understand. On paper, it made complete sense; time travel, alternate universes, wormholes through time and space, they were all S.H.I.E.L.D. 101. The Loki sitting across from him, head hanging off the edge of his cot and legs crossed halfway up the wall, wasn’t the Loki he was supposed to have. He was someone else’s, a Loki that had jumped from one universe to another for longer than Clint ever wanted to think about and somehow ended up here. That wasn’t a problem. 

Loki could know the future. Loki could know the past. Loki could know _everything_ , and it wouldn’t have bothered Clint in the slightest. What still felt odd, what he was starting to think would always feel odd, was the way Loki knew _him_.

“Chapter nine; Grim Defeat.” Clint said, clearing his throat. “Professor Dumbledore—“

“Was that a ‘no’, then?” Loki asked.

Clint looked up at the lolling man, or rather, down, and did not sight. “Really?”

Loki’s smile was sweet and innocent and sharp as glass. “I’m only looking out for your emotional well-being.”

“You’re being an ass, is what you’re doing.”

“Look at this face,” Loki said, pointing to his arched cheekbones, his smile vanishing as his brows stitched together in a parody of concern. “This is my listening face. You can share. You’re safe here.”

“Dumbledore sent all the Gryffindors back to the Great Hall,” Clint began again, a little louder than necessary, “where they were joined—“

“I understand,” Loki interrupted once again, looking down—up—at his own fingernails. “You’re being stoic. Very masculine, my love, well done.”

Heat prickled under Clint’s skin and his teeth ground together. Loki didn’t seem to notice the slip, but then again, he never did. Not until he looked at Clint or Clint looked at him and Loki remembered Clint didn’t. Clint could have reminded him, and had, the first few months. Now, though… He was getting used to the soft smiles and the warm eyes, the same way he was getting used to the British accent and penchant for drama, and to be honest, it didn’t bother him nearly as much as it probably should have.

“I’m something of an expert on abandonment, you know,” Loki continued, keeping his eyes on his hand. “Just because the good Doctor Habib decided to transfer as far from the two of us as humanly possible doesn’t mean you have to shrink back into that shell of yours.”

“I’m fine,” Clint said flatly. “It doesn’t bother me that Habib left, and it doesn’t bother me that Phil never gave me a call. He needs muscle and I’m an arrow in the back kind of guy, I get it. Besides, I’ve got better things to do than chase fire-starters and janky doodads.” 

Loki considered him for a moment, giving him another one of those crinkle-eyed looks that weren’t quite sad. Clint kept his gaze, and after a second the other man seemed to remember himself, settling in to a more comfortable position and giving Clint a permissive wave. 

“Very well. You may continue.”

Clint raised an eyebrow. “You sure, your royal dickness?”

Loki hummed and gave another, more flippant wave. Clint waited until the third to turn back to the book and began yet again. 

“Professor Dumbledore—“

“Oh, and by the way,” Loki said with an impish upside-down grin, “I need to go to London.”

The tattered book had already left Clint’s hand and collided corner-first with Loki’s nose by the time what he said slithered into Clint’s brain, and in the half hour it took Loki to convince him he wasn’t making a stupid joke about visiting wizards, one of his blue, blue eyes was already turning black.


	2. Chapter 2

Loki explained it like this. Every five thousand years, the nine realms converged, and bad things happened. He described holes in space, tears through which hapless bystanders, both human and otherwise, could stumble. A busy highway might suddenly lead commuters to the fiery hell of Muspelheim, or a monster straight out of a biologist’s darkest nightmares could suddenly leap out of Big Ben to terrorize the city. And all of it could be stopped, he claimed, if he could simply be at the right place at the right time.

They had twenty five days, which seemed like plenty of time to cross the Atlantic. 

Turned out, not so much.

Convincing Fury was actually the _easy_ part. After the Killian debacle, when Loki had tipped them off to the notorious ‘Mandarin’ and helped S.H.I.E.L.D. save Stark, President Ellis and probably half the planet, his trust in the Asgardian was at an all-time high, which was to say it existed at all. Once Clint pulled his ace in the hole—Dr. Erik Selvig, the scientist from the Tesseract project, backed up Loki’s claims, even if he had gone a little looney lately—Fury folded relatively easily. The risk of inaction was just too high. He did, however, have conditions.

“Sir, if Loki wanted to escape, why would he wait almost a year to say something?” Clint asked, turning in his chair to face the director as he paced around the room. 

“To make you ask that question,” Fury responded with a one-eyed glare. “This is non-negotiable, Barton. You’re taking a full unit, and the handcuffs stay on.”

“But—“ Clint began, looking to argue for all the hundreds of hours he and Loki had spent together without incident, all the lives Loki had saved, even if he _did_ leave out the bit about a steel beam shooting through Coulson’s chest, the bastard. Before he could, though, Fury fixed him with a stare that made his normal state of scowling seem downright fluffy. 

“Non. Negotiable.”

So Clint gave in. After all, Loki hadn’t specified _how_ he needed to be in London. Locked up in the back of a S.H.I.E.L.D. MDX would have to do. 

By the time Clint managed to jump through all the bureaucratic hoops—apparently the Brits weren’t too chuffed about welcoming a possibly dangerous alien being into their country, who would have thought—they barely had enough time to make the runway. Clint sat across from Loki as the jet took off, Agent Sitwell and his goonies flanking both of them on either side. He was glad the roar of the engines wasn’t conducive to conversation. He’d never really liked Sitwell—he was too much of a rules man. 

The coordinates Loki had given them led to an old abandoned factory on the outskirts of the city. Clint was disappointed. He’d sort of hoped to find something _interesting_ , like a rampaging monster or a glittering ball of timey-wimey stuff, not a dingy parking lot and a handful of brightly colored police cars. Even the _smell_ was disappointing, smog and oil and rain.

“The hell’s going on?” he mumbled as he parked the big black van at the edge of the action. He looked over his shoulder at the man trussed up in the back. “Anything I should know about?”

“You’re reasonably intelligent. You’ll figure it out.” Loki said with an infuriating smile. 

Clint huffed in annoyance and clambered out. The vans Sitwell had positioned fore and aft of his and Loki’s were already disgorging their passengers, three goons each and Sitwell for a total of seven uninvited guests. They converged on Clint like flies, weapons aimed casually—but pointedly—towards the ground.

“What’s going on?” Sitwell asked.

Clint shrugged and jerked a thumb in Loki’s direction. “Ask the human eight ball.”

Said eight ball rolled down the window so he could stick his head out into the fresh-ish air. He hadn’t seen the sky in at least a year and a half, and he clearly enjoyed it, his eyes fluttering closed as the damp wind played at his hair. A smile tugged at Clint’s lips, but he didn’t let it escape, not in front of the others.

“What’s going—“ Sitwell began again, addressed to Loki this time.

“Patience, Jasper,” Loki intoned, keeping his eyes closed. “All shall be revealed in time.”

Sitwell pouted, but didn’t argue. He didn’t have a lot of time too; one of the British policemen was already striding towards them with a sour look on his slack-jawed face. 

“Who are you lot, then?” the man asked. “MI6 or something?”

“Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Says so on the tin,” Clint replied, rapping his knuckles against the insignia emblazoned on his van. “What are you guys up to?”

“Shield, eh?” the officer said with a frown. “Never heard of it.”

“It stands for Strategic Homeland Intervention—“ Sitwell began.

“We’re the guys you call in when things get weird,” Clint cut in, leaving Sitwell glowering at him. “I’m guessing this qualifies.”

“Not really,” the officer said, taking off his cap to scratch the back of his head. “Standard missing persons. Girl wandered off about five hours ago, probably got herself lost. She’ll turn up sooner or later. Main thing we’re here about is the trespassing.”

“Well, aren’t you just the picture of civic responsibility,” Clint said. “What’s the girl’s name?”

“Jane Foster,” Loki answered. He fumbled with something, then produced the umbrella he’d insisted they pack, passing it awkwardly through the window. “She’ll be here shortly.”

Clint took the umbrella, and at the encouraging flick of Loki’s wrists, opened it. The officer stared at Loki as if noticing him for the first time, taking in the cuffs, the white standard issue clothing, the faint hint of a bruise on the bridge of his nose.

“Is this a Hannibal Lecter type situation?” the man asked hesitantly, leaning not-so-subtly away. “Because if this is a Hannibal Lecter type situation I’d just as soon wait over there, thanks.”

“Suit yourself,” Clint told him. He refused to meet Sitwell’s gaze, or acknowledge in any way that he was standing under an umbrella for no apparent reason. The man nodded, slowly, and skittered away, and not a second later, a boom of thunder rolled over the horizon. When the sudden rain hit the umbrella, Clint let himself smile.

“Thanks,” he murmured to Loki under Sitwell’s cursing and already failed attempts to keep his suit from immediately soaking through. 

“You’re quite welcome,” Loki replied with a friendly smirk.

Across the courtyard, by the strangely stacked shipping containers, a pair of familiar-looking women were arguing. They niggled at his brain, until two plus two came together and a light went off in his head.

“Jane Foster,” he said, eyes flicking quickly between Loki and the bickering women. “As in Thor’s girlfriend, Jane Foster. That’s who we’re after.”

“We’re not _after_ her,” Loki said. “We’re going to save her life. Open the door, please.” 

Clint glanced at Sitwell, who was currently trying to get one of his goons to surrender a jacket, and reached for the handle. Sitwell caught his movement out of the corner of his eye and lunged for him, but Loki had already slipped one slender leg out onto the shiny pavement. 

“What the hell are you doing?” Sitwell squawked. 

“What’s the point of bringing him all the way out here if we’re not going to give him the benefit of the doubt?” Clint asked, pushing Sitwell back so Loki could get out. “Relax, he’s still got the cuffs.”

“Yeah, at the moment,” Sitwell snarked, skewering them both at the end of a rain-spotted bespectacled glare. “We’ll see how long _that_ lasts.”

As Loki unfolded out of the car, a look of genuine pleasure washed over his face. Gravel crunched beneath his thin sneakers as he pressed his feet against the pavement, and the spattering rain left grey speckles across his shoulders. When Clint lifted the umbrella higher so Loki could fit under it without having to stoop, the man shot him a grateful smile, warmer than it should have been and well worth the trip. 

“Shan’t be long now,” Loki said with a sigh, rolling his shoulders and turning his face into the wind. 

“You know, this would be a lot easier if you’d just tell us what was going on,” Clint pointed out.

Loki glanced back with a grin. “Where’s the fun in that?”

“I can’t believe Fury authorized this,” Sitwell groused, pulling a surrendered flak jacket over his hairless head. “And I can’t believe you’re buying into it. He’s the god of lies, for Christ’s sake. Are we really going to trust him?”

“Yeah,” Clint replied. 

For a moment, Clint thought Sitwell was going to drop it, the man’s lips flapping around in befuddlement. Alas, today was apparently destined to be a day of disappointments.

“ _Why?!?_ ”

“If he’s wrong, we wasted some jet fuel,” Clint said slowly with as much patience as he could muster. “If he’s right, we just saved one of the largest cities in the world. You really want to be the guy who came out on the wrong side of that equation?” 

“And if he escapes?” Sitwell said. “What then?”

“Sir?” said one of Sitwell’s men.

“Why would I ever want to?” Loki replied. “The pleasure of your company is _such_ a privilege.” 

“You know what’s also privilege?” Sitwell stepped forward, breaking in to the circle of umbrella coverage to jab a finger at Loki’s chest. “Shutting up, that’s what.”

“Sir?” the soldier said again. 

“That doesn’t even make sense,” Clint laughed. 

“Sir,” the soldier said for a third time, tapping Sitwell on the shoulder.

Sitwell spun and snapped, “ _What?_ ”

“They’re gone, Sir.”

Clint didn’t even have to look up to realize the man was right. The women had vanished. None of the policemen seemed concerned, but Clint’s hand dropped to his sidearm anyway. Before he could take a single step to investigate, though, the rain disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived, leaving a thundering silence in its wake.

“Huh,” Clint said, cautiously lowering the umbrella. Loki blinked up at the overcast sky, a wistful smile tugging at the corners of his thin lips, and began to count.

“One…. two…. three…”

Sitwell shot Clint a look, and for once Clint understood him completely. 

“Uh… Loki?” he said, closing the umbrella and placing it on top of the van’s dewy roof. “Wanna maybe fill us in? I mean, now would really be the time.” 

Loki’s smile stretched wider, but he didn’t reply. 

“Four… five… six… seven…”

“See, this is exactly why Fury sent me along,” Sitwell said, turning to confront Clint directly and tossing the flak jacket aside. “You don’t know how to handle him.”

“ _I_ don’t?” Clint replied with a disbelieving laugh. “ _You’re_ the one who keeps calling him ‘Mr. Odinson’.” 

“That’s his name, and no, you don’t.” Sitwell crossed his arms over his chest, the dramatic gesture somewhat ruined by the squelch of his suit. “You like him. You think he’s you’re friend, so you let him get away with whatever he wants. Like counting. When is the creepy alien counting down to something _ever_ a good sign?”

Clint shrugged. “Well, he’s actually counting _up_ , not down, so...” 

“You know what?” Sitwell said, taking another step forward and turning his finger on Clint. “You’re _compromised_.”

Clint felt his eyes go cold and his jaw clench. Sitwell must have seen it, because his hand dropped like a rock, but he didn’t back up. 

“I get it,” Sitwell said, a good deal quieter than he had been before. “Believe me, I know what it’s like to want to believe in something. But Coulson almost _died_ because of him. It was a miracle we managed to save him, and the next guy he puts in harm’s way won’t be so lucky. I don’t want to be the next one to take a girder to the chest. Do you?”

When Clint’s voice came, it was low, and soft, and angry.

“The next time you talk about Coulson like you know what the hell you’re talking about will be the last time you talk for a year. Now step off, and keep stepping. My shrink just quit, and if I break your nose Fury’ll make me see a new one, and I really don’t have the time.” 

Sitwell’s brow furrowed and his nostrils flared and Clint flexed his bow hand, already figuring out what he was going to write in the HR report. 

Then Loki came to the end of his count.

“Twenty six.”

Casually, as if pulling him in for a dance, Loki slung his arm around Clint’s shoulders and pulled him down, curling around and over him just as a ripple fluttered through the world. It hit Clint hard, a shockwave and a tug all at once, as if for a second the world had stopped moving. The jolt crushed him against Loki’s chest, or Loki did, to keep him from falling, and even though the breath had been knocked from his chest his lungs still filled with the acrid stench of burnt lightning and blood. 

“What the _fuck_ ,” he gasped, clinging to Loki as the wisps of redness faded, as Loki drew him back to his feet, as broken glass crinkled to the ground and one of the cops and two of the other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents groaned. His hand dropped back to his holster and his fingers curled around the grip of his sidearm, the plastic cool and comforting against his skin.

Loki’s fingers curled over his. They were colder than the plastic, and for a moment that’s all Clint could feel. Then his brain caught up with his eyes and he saw what Loki was looking at, what everyone was looking at, what _he_ had been looking at.

Or, more precisely, _who_.

“Oh, _shit_ ,” Sitwell breathed.

Clint agreed.


	3. Chapter 3

Thor looked almost exactly how he remembered. Long, too-perfect blond hair, stubble, sort of stereotypically Nordic good looks. Fancier outfit. Same bewildered expression. Giant, giant hammer. He slid into a crouch at Jane Foster’s side—Jane Foster, who was now apparently an explosive device—and helped her up the same way Loki had helped Clint. 

“Jane,” Thor said desperately in his deep, deep voice. “Are you alright?”

Those of Sitwell’s crew who had managed to stay standing started forward, guns raised. Clint’s heart lurched in his chest and his hand flew out to call a halt before the word finished forming in his mind.

“Hold!”

“Are you crazy?” Sitwell hissed, scrambling to his feet. 

“Are you?” Clint didn’t spare the other agent a glance. He remembered New Mexico far too well. 

Loki started forwards as the police did, crunching over the broken glass as sure-footed as if he were walking across a lawn. As he moved, a shimmer swept over him, his white uniform vanishing under something akin to what they’d found him in; black and green leather accented with shimmering bronze, buckles and straps and coat-tails drifting behind him like smoke. Clint didn’t recognize him, and he did, and his head was pounding and his heart was pounding and he’d never really got the whole _god_ thing, not until this very moment. 

“Place your hands on your head, step back,” one of the braver cops said, holding a tiny ax—of all things—against his shoulder.

“This woman is unwell,” Thor said in a tone that brooked no argument. 

“She’s dangerous,” the cop replied.

A wind whipped up, fluttering in Thor’s hair and tugging at his cape, tugging at Loki, tugging at Clint, tugging at them all as if to make sure they were all still in the same world.

“So am—“ the god began.

And then he saw his brother. 

Clint had never seen someone do such a strong double take in real life. Thor’s gaze flickered over Loki for the briefest of moments before turning back to the cop, and then jerked back to Loki like his head was on a spring. His mouth worked at sounds that wouldn’t come out, rendered utterly and completely speechless, his expression a mirror to Clint’s. 

Loki smiled. “Hello, Brother.”

Thor’s hand fell from its place on Jane’s shoulder, hanging limply by his side. The hammer slipped in his grasp, his fingers just barely catching at the handle before it hit the ground. 

“Loki—“ he said, voice tense and crackling as if he were about to break into tears. Jane touched his arm, but he didn’t seem to notice, inching forward without moving at all. He looked Loki up and down, from his shiny black boots to his slicked-back hair, but when he saw the handcuffs they caught.

The transition from shock to rage was instantaneous. Thunder cracked, and it was only the spread, with the police on one side and the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents on the other, that gave him pause. In the end, he chose S.H.I.E.L.D., as Clint knew he would. They were the devil he knew.

“ _You dare_ —“ Thor roared, stalking forward as his hammer began to spin. 

Loki hopped sideways like a jackrabbit, putting himself squarely in the thunder god’s way with his hands raised, fingers spread and as far apart as the shackles would allow. 

“Thor!” he snapped, then continued more soothingly. “They are not the enemy.”

“They have kept you prisoner," Thor growled, hammer still spinning. “They keep you in _chains_!”

“No,” Loki said, then tilted his head. “Well, yes. It’s complicated. Put the hammer down.” 

Slowly, Thor’s confusion outweighed his fury and the hammer slowed to a stop. He looked at Loki with furrowed brows and shimmering eyes, shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“How can this be?” he asked. “We thought you lost to us forever.” 

Loki gave a thin smile. “As I said, it’s complicated. I promise, I’ll explain everything, but for now, we have other concerns.” 

He looked pointedly over his shoulder at a very confused and lost-looking Jane, still standing where Thor had left her. Thor followed his gaze and seemed to remember her for the first time, coming as close as Clint suspected Asgardians ever got to tripping over himself rushing to her side. 

“Jane, forgive me,” he said, cupping her face in his hand. “I’ll take you to the healers immediately.” 

“It’s okay, really,” she said, glancing from Thor to his brother and back. “I’m fine. I feel fine now.”

“You are not fine,” Thor murmured, pressing his forehead to hers.

Clint shifted on his feet, forcing himself steady. Sitwell’s jaw was on his chest and the police were useless and Coulson was a thousand miles away, and Clint was in charge. He had to be. He knew better than any of them what could happen next. Fishing the key to Loki’s shackles out of his pocket, he sidled to Loki’s side as unobtrusively as possible.

“What are you doing?” Sitwell asked loudly, completely missing the point.

“Saving us all an awful lot of paperwork,” Clint replied through gritted teeth as the key clicked the handcuffs open. 

He heard Sitwell bluster on, but wasn’t, _couldn’t_ pay attention. Loki smiled at him, one of those warm soft smiles Clint could never quite pretend he didn’t notice, and as he rubbed his wrist his fingers slid on top of Clint’s. It might have been an accident. The pause wasn’t. Clint pulled his hand away and Loki’s smile flickered, and for a moment Clint’s heart jerked, and then Loki turned back to Thor and the moment was gone.

“Shall we go, Brother?” Loki asked as the shackles clattered to the pavement.

“Go?” Sitwell squawked. “Go where?”

No-one even bothered to look his way. Thor smiled a lop-sided smile that was both the same as and far more innocent than the one Clint had become so familiar with and held out his hand. “Indeed, Brother. Let us go home.” 

Clint was about to step back, out of the way, when Loki wrapped an arm around his waist and started walking. 

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked, offering up a token resistance. Loki ignored him entirely. 

“Do you think he’ll still let me in after all this time?” 

“He’d better,” Thor grumbled back as he and Loki clasped hands.

“Who are you—“ Clint began. Then the world went _awesome_ and he forgot the question.


	4. Chapter 4

First came the lights, dancing around them like a pure blue-white aurora on speed. An instant later, they were hit by a hurricane out of nowhere, and an instant after that—

Clint never felt his feet leave the ground. One second he was standing on wet concrete, and the next there was nothing there at all, not below him, not above him, not around them, just a great vast-y nothingness that was also _everything_. Stars zoomed past, planets, nebulas, the entirety of the universe whizzing by so quickly he couldn’t begin to follow it. They roared upwards towards a dark spot and then through it, into _somewhere else_ , somewhere with different stars that flew by every bit as fast as the old ones. Clint couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the flashing majesty to look, but he knew Loki was grinning.

And then there was solid ground under his boots and they were running, stumbling to a stop as the lights flickered and died. Clint’s heart was pounding so loudly he could barely hear the clanking machinery powering down.

“Holy shit,” he gasped. 

“We have to do that again,” Jane said, delight bubbling in her voice.

Clint glanced up at her, not sure whether he agreed or thought she was a crazy person or both. He didn’t look at her for long.

There was a very large, very intimidating man in a golden horned helm standing on a pedestal in the center of the golden dome, and he was staring straight at Clint like he was a curious piece of dryer lint. He had an extremely large golden sword. It occurred to Clint that his bow was in the back of the MDX, on Earth, along with his backup and all his friends and all he had here was a sidearm that would be about as much use against Asgardian armour as a pea shooter. 

Actually, a pea shooter would have been better. Peas don’t ricochet. 

Jane caught him staring and turned to see what he was looking at. When she saw the imposing man, her face lit up into a friendly smile, and his softened into something approaching pleasant.

“Hi,” she said brightly.

“Welcome to Asgard,” he replied with an upward twitch of his lips. A twitch which disappeared when he glanced back to Clint. Clint had never been good at making friends. Usually, though, they didn’t hate him before he’d even opened his mouth.

“Heimdall, behold!” Thor said, clapping his arm around Loki’s shoulder as the dark-skinned Asgardian descended from his platform. “Loki has returned to us!”

“A joyous occasion,” the man—Heimdall—said. He sounded neither joyous, nor surprised. 

“Nice to see you too, Heimdall,” Loki said with a thin grimacing smile, carefully extricating himself from his brother’s steely grip. Said grip was immediately transferred to Jane, although it was considerably gentler, his big beefy arm wrapped around her waist like she was a porcelain doll.

“We shall take you to the healers immediately,” he told her softly before looking back to Loki. “Then you and I may speak.”

“Don’t forget Father,” Loki said dryly as the three of them started off towards the—quite literal, Clint realized—Rainbow Bridge. 

“He will be so pleased to see you, Brother,” Thor said with a grin.

“I’m sure he will,” Loki replied in a tone that suggested otherwise. If Thor noticed, he gave no sign.

Clint moved to join them, but hesitated, once again finding himself pinned under Heimdall’s penetrating stare. The look felt like a warning, the kind of look Fury gave a perp before interrogation. Just waiting for Clint to do something wrong. 

“This place is _amazing_ ,” Jane said as the trio approached the half-moon entrance to the domed room. 

“Wait until you see the palace,” Thor promised. 

Heimdall wouldn’t look away, or blink, for that matter. Clint didn’t understand why _he_ was the one Mr. Goldeneyes was suspicious of. Not Jane, not Loki. He hadn’t done anything. 

“Come on, then,” Loki called back, impatient and amused all at once. “Don’t just stand there like a moronic gibbon, we have a calendar to keep.”

Clint turned away. The guardian’s eyes burned into his back as he jogged to catch up, but then the honeyed light of another world hit his face, and just like that the exhilaration was back, swooping up inside him like the towers and spires and waterfalls, the sheer _beauty_ of the city before him. His jaw went slack and his eyes went wide, and for once when Loki’s fingers brushed his he didn’t pull away.


	5. Chapter 5

The brothers led them to a dim torch-lit room deep in the bowels of the glorious pipe-organ palace. A quintuplet of women in blue robes—the healers, Clint assumed—positioned Jane on a glowing table, four of them gathering around while the fifth stood by Thor’s side. Lines of strange dusty light appeared between the horns at the table corners, and the four healers began manipulating them, moving bits and pieces around like the holotable technology S.H.I.E.L.D. had recently appropriated from Stark. Jane watched curiously as shapes emerged, glowing bright.

“What’s that?” she asked, reaching out to touch a triangle of light hovering just above her chest. 

“Be still,” one of the healers chastised. 

The women pulled up an image of Jane, rendered in the same dusty light, and raised it to eye level where they could work with it. 

“Cool,” Clint murmured under his breath. “A little low-res, but given that you guys still use _swords_...” 

The grin that cracked Loki’s face was short-lived. “This is not of Earth,” Thor said to the healer beside him. “What is it?”

The willowy woman swallowed and shook her head. “We do not know. But she will not survive the amount of energy surging within her.”

Clint’s chest tightened. He knew getting Jane to Asgard wasn’t going to be the end of it—if it were, he and Loki could have moved on to _Chamber of Secrets_ by now. But they _didn’t know_? He glanced at Loki, but the other man didn’t look back, apparently content to watch the proceedings and wait.

“That’s a quantum field generator, isn’t it?” Jane said, giving no indication she’d heard what the younger healer had said. 

“It’s a Soul Forge,” the oldest woman answered.

“Does a Soul Forge transport molecular energy from one place to another?” Jane asked.

The healer dropped her hands from the glittering bands, staring at Jane with no small amount of surprise. “Yes.”

Jane nodded her head and whispered to Thor, “Quantum field generator.”

Thor smiled, strained but honest. Clint found himself admiring them both. If he’d just exploded and been handed a death sentence by the Norse gods themselves, he doubted he’d be cracking jokes. 

Suddenly, a voice echoed in from the entrance.

“My words are mere noises to you that you ignore them completely?” an elderly man with a silver eye patch asked as he paced towards them. 

“She is ill,” Thor protested. 

“She is mortal,” the old man said, dismissing the dusty light with a wave as the healers scuttled into the shadowy periphery. “Illness is their defining trait.”

As the light swirled away, something odd happened. The man was on one side of the table and Loki was on the other, and Loki looked at the man and the man looked at Loki, and the tension in the room was all it took for Clint to put the pieces together and know who Grumpy McEyepatch was before Loki opened his mouth.

“Father,” he said, carefully neutral.

Odin didn’t respond. His jaw pulsed and he turned his one-eyed gaze back to the table, not averting his gaze so much as denying its existence. Thor shifted uncomfortably, glancing down at an equally uncomfortable Jane and apparently deciding to deal with things one at a time.

“I brought her here because we can help her.”

“She does not belong in Asgard any more than a goat belongs at a banquet table.” Odin began to circle, still not looking at Loki, or Clint for that matter. It was as if they weren’t even in the room. 

“Did he just—“ Jane gaped in disbelief, propping herself up on the table to look Odin more or less in the eye. “Who do you think you are?”

“I am Odin,” Odin said, exactly as curmudgeonly and with exactly the kind of caterpillar-in-his-cereal scowl Clint was coming to expect from Asgardians. “King of Asgard. Protector of the Nine Realms.”

Someone else might have shied away, but not Jane. “Oh,” she said, more blunt than awkward. “Well, I’m—“

“I know very well who you are, Jane Foster,” Odin cut in, finally sparing Clint a disdainful look. “And Clint Barton, Agent of Shield.”

The way he said it, Clint’s name could have been a curse. He hadn’t had a chance to ask Loki about the Heimdall thing, and now he was beginning to think this was going to be a conversation instead of a question. He looked to his Asgardian much the same way as Jane looked to hers, and got much the same response. 

“Something is within her, Father,” Thor said, ignoring Jane’s whispered question and following his father around the Soul Forge. “We must help her.”

“Her world has its healers, they’re called doctors. Let them deal with it,” Odin said. “Guards, take her back to Midgard.”

A couple of the armoured men standing in the background came forward while Loki wrapped his arm around Clint’s waist and gently pulled him back. This time he at least had the courtesy of flashing a reassuring smile. 

One of the guards reached to grab Jane’s shoulder. Thor reached out, calling, “No, no, I would not—“ 

Jane exploded again. Loki’s grip kept Clint upright as the guards clanged and clattered to the ground, but it didn’t stop the impact and it did nothing for the smell or the ringing in his ears. 

“—Touch her,” Thor finished, rushing to her side as the last of the red wisps faded away. “Jane, are you alright?”

Jane didn’t answer. Odin approached on the opposite side of the Soul Forge, brushing past Clint and Loki without a glance. When he reached out, hovering his hand up and down Jane’s arm, her veins stood out in pulsing crimson as if her blood had turned to liquid iron.

“It’s impossible,” Odin said, confusion smoothing some of the lines from his brow.

Loki stepped forward. For the first time Clint saw all three of them together, brother next to father next to brother, and poor Jane in the middle, still reeling.

“You know it’s not,” Loki finally said, as respectful as Clint had ever heard him. 

“The infection,” the eldest healer said. “It’s defending her.”

“It’s defending itself,” Loki corrected. “Father, you know—“

“Silence,” Odin snapped. 

Loki’s mouth closed into a hard line and his expression froze, carefully chiseled stone instead of his usual ice. Odin met Loki’s gaze, equally rocky, daring Loki to speak. Clint expected him to. Loki always had something to say, something witty or biting, and now would be the moment. Now _had_ to be the moment to lay it all on the table, to show Odin his hand and say, ‘I know what happens here. I’ve seen it.’

Loki didn’t say a damn thing. 

Odin took Loki’s obedience as victory, huffing derisively as he turned and stormed away. “Come with me.”

Thor jumped to follow him, pausing only to help Jane to her feet. Loki lagged, and Clint lagged with him. 

“Loki,” Clint began, “I’ve made it a point not to ask you about family stuff, because you don’t ask me about _my_ dirty laundry and I figured I’d return the favour, but by my count it’s been at least a month since you gave me a straight answer on _anything_. So answer me this. What the _hell_ was that?”

Loki sighed. “That was Odin, King of Asgard and protector of the Nine Realms. Do try to keep up.”

They started down the hallway together, passing through puddles of torchlight and following the ring of Odin’s footsteps and the murmuring of Thor and Jane as much as their shadows. Clint hooked his thumbs into his belt loops to keep them away from his holster.

“You know, if you’d told me we were going to visit your folks, I would have talked Stark into loaning me a suit. I’m seven different kinds of underdressed.”

Loki laughed.


	6. Chapter 6

Odin led them through the twisting, turning warrens of the palace, passing through wonder after wonder. One room held a gigantic transparent tree, swirling galaxies hanging from the branches like over-ripe fruit. Clint gaped as they walked beneath it. He’d read about Yggdrasil, the World Tree, but he hadn’t imagined it quite so… literally. 

The room they ended up in was relatively small, some kind of library with the shelves shuttered away behind lattice windows. Everything was gold. Clint was starting to see a pattern.

“There are relics,” Odin began as he marched through the massive gilded doors, “that pre-date the universe itself. What lies within her appears to be one of them.”

He approached the large desk in the center of the room and plucked an old tome from a pile of books, the rest of them settling around it like Arthurian knights. “The Nine Realms are not eternal. They had a dawn, as they will have a dusk. But before that dawn, the dark forces, the dark elves, reigned absolute and unchallenged.”

“Born of eternal night, the dark elves come to steal away the light,” Thor recited thoughtfully as Odin flipped the book to a shimmering illustration of a group of humanoid creatures in what appeared to be masks, standing before a leader holding some kind of spiky blob. “I know these stories, Mother told them to us as children.”

“Their leader Malekith made a weapon out of that darkness, and it was called the Aether,” Odin went on. “While the other relics often appear as stones, the Aether is fluid and ever-changing. It changes matter into dark matter. It seeks out host bodies, drawing strength from their life force. Malekith sought to use the Aether’s power to return the universe to one of darkness.”

“Sounds like a real stand-up guy,” Clint muttered. 

Odin shot him a look. Getting glared at by one-eyed men wasn’t exactly new to him, but where Fury’s scowl cut into you, slicing you apart to look at all the tender bits inside, Odin’s was a rolled-up newspaper swatting at a particularly annoying fly. Where Fury observed, Odin silenced. Under the full force of that look, Clint couldn’t blame Loki for keeping his peace. 

“But,” Odin continued tersely, “after eternities of bloodshed, my father Bor finally triumphed, ushering in a peace that lasted thousands of years.”

“What happened?” Jane asked.

The scowl Odin gave her was only marginally less annoyed than the one he’d given Clint. “He killed them all.” 

“I’m afraid not.” 

If Loki had wacked Odin on the head with a giant inflatable hammer, Odin’s jaw couldn’t have clenched any tighter. His eye was a phone book, two inches from smashing Loki in the face and reviving his black eye. This time, though, Loki didn’t back down. He slid in closer, pushing his way into center stage.

“Some yet remain, out there in the darkness between worlds. In my travels, I have—“

“Silence,” Odin said again. 

“They _are_ there, Father. Malekith still—“

“I said silence!” Odin barked, taking a step forward of his own and sending Clint and Jane skittering out of the line of fire. 

Loki didn’t flinch. He looked down his nose at the old man, in the cold, imperious way Clint had only see him use in play, the sort of brittle strength Clint associated with the likes of Draco Malfoy, all talk and no trousers. 

“You still think so little of me?”

“After what you have done?” Odin practically growled. “Tell me, why should I not put you in the dungeons where you belong?”

“Father!” Thor protested, surging to his brother’s defence before Odin cut him off with a sharp gesture.

“Your love is admirable, but misplaced,” Odin said without turning his head, meeting Loki’s unchanging gaze. “You betrayed us. You betrayed Asgard. And now you come to spread falsehoods and lies, to wake demons long in their graves, and why? To what end?”

“To protect the realm.” 

Odin smoldered. “It is not yours to protect.”

Loki’s lips tightened and his nostrils flared as if it was all he could do to keep his mouth shut. Knowing Loki, it probably was. Clint could see an explosion coming, and this time it wouldn’t come from Jane, but it was possible she might be able to advert it. Odin clearly didn’t like him—so far, nobody on this flying hunk of pyrite did—but Jane at least he’d answered. Clint caught her eye and jerked his head towards the brewing calamity and Jane, bless her cotton socks, caught on immediately. 

“Okay,” Jane said in an exaggeratedly calm voice, raising her hands and sliding forward. “Why don’t we all just take a deep breath and—“

“Throw me in the dungeons if you wish,” Loki snapped. “You’re right, it’s no more than I deserve.” 

Well, shit.

“Whoa, okay, no,” Clint said, coming as close to pushing between the two men as he dared. “Let’s stop right there—“

“Just do as I ask,” Loki continued, demanding and begging at the same time. “ _Defend Asgard_.”

“Asgard does not need defending,” Odin insisted.

“But Father, the Aether—“ Thor cut in.

“How about we all just take a step back—” Jane pleaded.

“You have no place here,” Odin snapped at her. “Guards!”

“Father, you cannot—“ Thor began.

“Enough, you doddering old fool!” Loki spat.

If Loki had beaten Odin with an inflatable hammer before, now it was a real one. The old man’s mouth fell open, a sliver of shock and bubbling anger Loki didn’t let come out, filling the room with a sudden boiling rage of his own.

“Have you lost your other eye, or is the defect in your decaying mind? You think I would return here to face your mockery and scorn for a _fairy tale_?”

Loki loomed over Odin, staring down at him with eyes full of fire. The fists at his side were clenched so tightly his knuckles passed through white into snowy blue. 

“What must I do, Father?” he asked, venom dripping from every word. “ _What must I do_? Grovel at your feet? Beg for forgiveness? I already gave my life. What more do you ask? Or am I once again doomed by virtue of my abhorrent birth?”

Odin flinched, and Loki sneered, lips curling in disgust. “You accuse _me_ of deceit. You call _me_ the god of lies. Where do you think I learned it? Every word you ever said to me was counterfeit. _You_ are the liar, _Father_. Worse, you are a _hypocrite_. And gravest of all, you are _useless_. You call yourself a protector. You are a _charlatan_. Whether Malekith lives or not changes nothing. With you in the throne it’s only a matter of time before all of Asgard falls.” 

Silence boomed. Clint didn’t dare breathe. No-one did. No-one but Loki, huffing out the glowing embers of his anger, and Odin. Odin’s eyes were cold. 

“How dare you,” the old king finally said. “ _How dare you._ ”

“Father—“ Thor began again. 

“Silence,” Odin said for the fourth time that day. “Get out of my sight, and take your mortal with you.”

Thor hesitated. He looked at Loki, but Loki didn’t look back, didn’t acknowledge anyone but the king. In the end, it was Jane, tugging on his arm and whispering something into his ear, who got him to move, glancing back with every step.

The moment they left, the chill in Clint’s chest solidified into a block of crushing ice. His hand hovered at his hip, not on the butt of his gun just yet, but close enough to draw if he needed to. His fingers itched for a bowstring and his legs cramped, wondering why the hell they were still here. For once, he had to admit that Sitwell was right. He should never have let Loki out of the car. 

“Guards,” Odin said again once Thor was out of earshot. “Take Loki to the dungeons. Put him in a cell, and leave him there.”

Two of the waiting guards reached out to take Loki by the arms. One of them found a nine millimetre leveled at his head. 

“Back off, Broomhilda,” Clint said. “He’s my responsibility, and you’re not taking him anywhere without me.”

“Very well,” Odin replied coolly.

Clint heard the clank of a guard coming up behind him. He could have turned in time, but on the way he caught Loki’s eyes, his expression, brows pulled together and one side of his mouth quirked up, stuck somewhere between shaking his head and laughing. 

“Oh, Clint,” Loki sighed as the blow came down.

_Son of a god damned—_


	7. Chapter 7

— bitch!

Clint sat up straight, sucking in air and reaching for his sidearm. It wasn’t there. 

“You’re awake,” Loki’s voice drifted in over the throbbing in Clint’s head. “I was beginning to wonder if your skull wasn’t quite so thick after all.”

“Gun?” Clint grunted. The world was bright, much to bright, and the dull subsonic buzz gurgling through the air made him feel sick. That or the concussion.

“By your left foot,” Loki said. “That was valiant of you. Incredibly idiotic, but valiant.”

“You’re welcome,” Clint grumbled as he slotted his weapon back into its holster. The room was coming into focus, and it wasn’t what he’d expected. Given Asgard’s prominent medieval theme, he’d figured the dungeons would be Inquisitional, all filthy cobblestones and iron bars and chains. The cell they were in, however, was essentially just an empty version of the one at the Cube S.H.I.E.L.D. kept Loki in. The golden honeycomb forcefield was new and the lights were threaded into the corners instead of dappled across the ceiling, but aside from that it might as well have been home. “Am I right to assume that was all part of your ineffable plan, or am I going to have to initiate you into the one-eyed assholes club?”

“Ineffable?” Loki smiled. “All this reading has been good for your vocabulary.” 

“One-eyed assholes club it is.”

“Your heroics were somewhat unanticipated, but otherwise everything’s coming up roses.”

“Good,” Clint said. “That’s… that’s good.”

Loki was sitting against one of the too-white walls, one leg tucked under him and hands in his lap. He’d let the illusory armour drop and was back in loose cotton, sleeves pushed up around his elbows and his shoes tossed haphazardly to one side. From where Clint lay—he wasn’t entirely sure how, but sitting had devolved into lounging into laying on his back with his arms flopped by his sides like an unfinished snow angel—he could see the sole of Loki’s foot, the scar looping down from his big toe and across the ball towards his instep. He’d noticed it before, couldn’t _help_ but notice, given Loki’s irrational distrust of footwear, but he’d never asked about it. He’d never asked about any of them. There were too many. 

“You know it goes both ways, right?” Clint said, not really realizing there was a silence until he broke it. 

Loki blinked. “I have another word for you. _Extemporaneous_. It means ‘Clinton, let’s not play the pronoun game, it’s dreadfully dull.’”

“Your listening face. Remember?” Clint pointed to his own cheeks in mimicry of the gesture Loki had used weeks earlier. “I’ve got one too. This is it. You can share. You’re safe here.”

Loki smiled again, one of the slow half-smiles that reached the corners of his eyes, but not inside them. “I thought you made a point of not asking.”

“Apparently not as much as you make a point of not telling.” Clint sat up again, turning on his hip to face Loki directly. The dark-haired man didn’t reply, and he couldn’t seem to meet Clint’s gaze. “I’m trying to trust you, Loki. I really am.”

“I know,” Loki said. “Believe me, I know.”

Clint could have pressed it. Sitwell would have. Fury would have Loki in pieces by now. Coulson, Natasha, _especially_ Natasha… Every good agent he knew would have needled in. 

Clint didn’t. Instead, he shifted to sit up against the wall at Loki’s side and waited. 

He didn’t have to wait long.

“Thor will come,” Loki said. “A day, perhaps a day and a half. It varies, I don’t know why.”

“And then?” Clint asked. 

“And then we fight Malekith. Well, Malekith’s accursed underlings. The man himself is all Thor’s, I’m afraid.”

“Why don’t you just _tell_ them?”

“After what you just saw, do you really think the Allfather would believe me?” Loki asked with a dark smirk. “No. If they know what’s coming, they’ll try to stop it and get themselves killed in the process. It’s Thor or Odin or… The universe needs them. The timeline needs them. And so sacrifices have to be made.”

“He’s coming, isn’t he. He’s coming to Asgard.”

Loki didn’t answer, and he didn’t have to. 

Clint wasn’t afraid. Fear wasn’t the right word, it was immediate, bright and sharp. What Clint felt was a loaded handgun in a drawer that wasn’t locked, a thousand tonnes of concrete above his head supported by pillars riddled with cracks. He still had dreams about the Destroyer. He and Habib had done a lot of work on that before the bastard hightailed it to the land of venomous spiders and drop bears, but they still came every once in a silver moon. That kind of power… The thunder cracking in Thor’s hammer, the wave of liquid darkness that exploded out of Jane every time someone tried to touch her, even the dizzying rush of the bifrost, all of it… It was too much. He’d been trained for terrorists and assassins, not magic and monsters and gods in black leather. 

Maybe that’s what Heimdall saw with those golden eyes of his. Loki and Thor were Loki and Thor, and Jane had the Aether coursing through her veins, but Clint was just Clint. A tiny man with a tiny bow. Except he didn’t even have that. 

Why had Loki even brought him here? Clint was a guppy and the ocean was full of great white sharks, tearing each other to pieces as he bared his puny little pea shooter fangs and pretended to make a difference. What was even the _point_?

Just as Clint was working up the courage to ask, a sudden shimmer of pearlescent green appeared in the center of the room, coalescing into a human form. Clint’s hand automatically flew to his sidearm, drew and aimed as Loki jumped to his feet and shouted—

“Mother!”

Oh.


	8. Chapter 8

Someone must have been watching over him, because by the time Loki’s mother whirled to face them in a cloud of diaphanous blue, his gun was eighty percent of the way back into its holster. It probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway; she only had eyes for her son. 

“Loki!” the woman cried, joy bursting from every seam like sunlight. “Look at you! You look a thousand years older!”

“Not quite,” Loki replied with a matching grin. 

Clint stood, intending to stay on the periphery, but his movement caught the woman’s eye. 

“You must be my son’s keeper,” she said to him, a little icy but friendly compared to all the other Asgardians he’d met. “Heimdall says you are a… courageous man.” 

“Clinton is a friend, Mother,” Loki chided gently. “Clinton, this is Frigga, Queen of Asgard.” 

“It’s an honor to meet you, Ma’am,” Clint said, hoping to keep at least one member of Loki’s family from wanting to murder him. He held out his hand to shake, but Frigga clutched hers to her chest.

“Apologies,” she said, her face a mask of courtesy. “The spell is fragile, you understand.” 

Clint didn’t, but he accepted it anyways, slipping back into the background the way he’d wanted to from the start. Frigga didn’t seem offended. She glowed at Loki, running her hand along the line of his hair, his face, skimming so close to his skin his eyelids fluttered. 

“When the Allfather told me you yet lived, I was so happy I feared my heart would burst from my chest and soar into the stars.” Frigga smiled, a bright at first and then shifting into the same not-quite-sadness Clint had seen on Loki’s face a thousand times before. “And when he told me he would not bring you home, it grew so heavy that it bent the branches of Yggdrasil itself. I shall never forgive him for that.”

“As he shall never forgive me, it seems,” Loki quipped. 

Frigga’s lips pressed into a thin line, and before she could finish sighing and speak Loki was already rolling his eyes and ambling away. 

“Odin does love you, in his own way. Since your brother destroyed the bifrost, the Nine Realms have been mired in war, chaos—”

“I don’t _care_.” 

“Loki!”

“Whether he loves me or hates me is irrelevant,” Loki said, his hands talking as much as his mouth. “And quite frankly, dealing with him is a nuisance I want no part of. Just as long as he _listens_ , for once in his miserable life.”

“He is the king,” Frigga rebuked. “He need listen to no-one.” 

“A _true_ king knows his limits.”

Frigga laughed. “A scathing indictment, coming from you.” 

“I know my limits,” Loki insisted. “And I am not a king. Nor shall I be, despite the lies you weaned me on.” 

“So it is our doing, then?” Frigga asked, turning to follow Loki as he continued to stalk around the room. “Have you any notion of the damage you have done? Of the lives that have been lost because of your actions?”

Loki stopped, fixing her with a stare that was guilty and reproving and hopeful all at once. “Less, I think, than those who will die if Odin does nothing.”

Frigga’s pressed lips returned. She didn’t argue, though, and Loki stepped close once more, holding is hands out palms up.

“Please, Mother,” he said quietly. “Have faith in me, just this once. Make him understand, before it’s too late.”

Hesitantly, the queen smiled again. It was a strange smile, stretched thin and lingering for too long around her mouth, yet never reaching her eyes. 

“My sweet boy,” she said, hovering her hands above his, so close her fingertips shimmered. “Don’t fret so. You’re home now. All shall be well.” 

The muscle in the corner of Loki’s jaw twitched. Even so, he forced a smile of his own, a mirror of Frigga’s and yet different. There were other faces under his, masks layered on top of masks, some sad, some happy, some angry. How many times had Loki had this conversation, Clint wondered? How long had it taken him to figure out what to say, how to say it? How much of it was still true?

“I love you, Mother,” Loki said, gentle and calm and sad. 

Frigga’s smile thawed, melting into her eyes at last. “And I you.”

Clint looked away. He’d never been good at the whole family thing.

Loki never said goodbye. He just closed his hands, folding his fingers over and into and through hers, starting a pearly ripple that left nothing but emptiness in its wake. Frigga’s face was the last thing to vanish, her eyes slipping closed even as they vanished into the light.

Loki didn’t speak for a long, long time.


	9. Chapter 9

Clint was half asleep when the screaming started. It echoed down the corridor, bouncing from one forcefield to another until it was impossible to tell exactly where the sound came from. Clint tried to stand to see what was happening, but Loki snagged his wrist. 

“There’s no point,” the Asgardian said. The lights flickered ominously.

“But—“ Clint began, and never finished.

The screaming transitioned into a series of dull thumps, and then an animalistic roar that finally got the attention of the guards lollygagging at the end of the hallway. They raced off to the rescue and Clint’s legs itched to join them. Sitting here and doing nothing went against every instinct he had.

The lights flickered again and a single voice cried out in agony before cutting off with a resounding electrical boom. Alarms began to blare, drowning out the faint clink and clank of battle, but not the second boom that followed it, or the third, or the fourth.

“Are we really just going to sit here?” Clint asked, shifting nervously as the booms came ever closer.

“Sit, stand,” Loki replied, hauling himself upright even as he spoke. “It makes no difference. There’s nothing either of us can do.”

Scraggly prisoners in furs and masks ran past them, whooping and shouting in the sudden chaos. Loki strolled up to the patterned barrier as one inmate in particular walked by. At first, Clint didn’t see anything different about him, other than his leisurely pace. Then, peering closer through the shimmering wall, Clint realized—that wasn’t a mask. Or armor. Not anymore.

The horned chitinous thing paused to consider them. Loki stared back. Clint skittered to his feet, but kept his back against the wall, his bow hand flexing. The creature’s eyes were blue, too blue and too bright by far and buried deep within the crags of its monstrous face. They were the only human thing left. 

When the brute lost interest and stomped off, Clint breathed a sigh of relief. Half of one, at least. 

“You might want to take the stairs to the left,” Loki called after it.

“Wha…” Clint mouthed, looking from the creature to Loki and back again as it took his advice. “Did you just… _help_ it?”

“It had to be done,” Loki said flatly. 

“Had to—“ Clint stammered. “Loki, that thing… That thing _wasn’t human_.”

Shooting him a look over his shoulder, Loki paced back to his place by the wall. “Neither am I.”

“Oh, yeah, right, I forgot,” Clint deadpanned. More guards were pouring down the staircase, joining the barbarians in battle and despite their armour and their weapons, _losing_. He saw one go down out of the corner of his eye, heard the tortured howl as he fell. “People are _dying_ out there. We have to _do_ something.”

“I told you, Clinton,” Loki said as he sat. “Sacrifices have to be made. So it was with Killian, and so it is here.”

Clint grit his teeth. He wanted to say it was different. And it was. With Killian, hundreds of people had died while S.H.I.E.L.D. kept still and silent, waiting until fear of the Mandarin quadrupled their budget and Stark built the remote controlled suits that ultimately won the day. Here there were a dozen at best. 

But they were _right there_.

He paced, one end of the field to the other. This was why he’d joined S.H.I.E.L.D.. So he could protect people, so he could save them, so he would never have to stand by, never be helpless, never… 

“There has to be something,” he insisted. “If we could get the field down—“

“We can’t. I know it’s difficult—“

“You don’t know a god damn thing!”

The outburst startled Clint as much as it startled Loki. They stared at each other, Clint’s gun in his hand, though he couldn’t remember drawing it. He hadn’t aimed. He hadn’t fired. But it was there. 

Then he heard the bellow of Thor’s voice, barely audible over the calamity of blood and steel.

“Thor!” he shouted, turning back to the barrier. The blonde ubermensch didn’t hear him, so he raised his fist, pounding on the electric honeycomb with the butt of his gun. The light stung where it hit his skin, a thousand tiny insects biting him all at once. “Thor! Let me out, I can help. Thor!”

“What are you doing?” Loki asked.

Clint ignored him. He hit the field again, and again, slapped it with the palm of his other hand. The pain was focus. It drove out the buzzing, the dull hum that had been eating into his head from the moment he woke up. He had to get out there. He had to. 

Loki said his name, stood up, walked towards him. Clint stalked away, from the forcefield, from Loki, putting distance between them that didn’t matter. His arm swung up and his finger hit the trigger and the bullet bounced. 

Loki punched him in the face. 

Clint stumbled. He didn’t lose his feet, not quite, but before he could actually find them Loki was grabbing him and shoving him up against the wall, his sidearm skittering away to join Loki’s shoes. 

“Lackwit!” the Asgardian cursed at him. “Moronic, harebrained _dunce_! What the hell were you thinking?” 

“Let me go,” Clint gritted, struggling to shove Loki off. The Asgardian barely even moved. “Let me go. Let go, let go, let me the _fuck go_ you _fucking psychopath!_ ”

Loki did, drawing back as if _he_ were the one with a brand new bruise. Clint shoved him again, shoved him anyway, braced against the wall and pushed as hard as he could until Loki stepped backwards, his brows pinched and his eyes worried as if he actually gave a shit. 

“Do you feel _anything_ anymore, or is it all a lie?” Clint asked, shoving Loki back another step. “You’ve been through this so many times, so who cares if someone dies, right? You can just start over whenever you want!”

“That’s not—“ Loki began, stuttering as Clint forced him to yield yet more ground. “You know that isn’t how this—Will you _stop_? What are you even _doing_?”

“How the _fuck_ should I know?” Clint shouted. “You never tell me!”

Before Loki could interrupt him, Clint tore away, slamming his fist into the barrier as he walked past. He twisted back around, every word crushed through his teeth, his throat, the tightness in his chest.

“I’m an _Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D._ , damn it! I’m not your carry-on luggage, I’m not your in-flight entertainment. Why the hell did you even _bring_ me here? What the hell good am _I_ on _Asgard_? If you wanted to prove once and for all how damn superior you are, there are _easier._ ” He slammed his boot into the honeycomb, static dancing up his leg. “ _Fucking._ ” Another kick. “ _Ways._ ”

The third kick left his leg numb. His heart was an engine, pumping fire through his veins, and his lungs were two sizes too small. Loki gaped at him. 

“Is that…” he fumbled, all his fancy words vanished into a slack-jawed haze. “You don’t really…”

The battle was over. The battle had been over for a while. Thor wasn’t even _there_ anymore. There had been some kind of explosion, Clint seemed to recall, right around the time he started kicking the impenetrable technomagic wall. There were only two men left standing; a fat bearded Viking stereotype and blond Shakespeare. Both of them were staring. 

“What?” Clint ground. 

“Oh, nothing,” Shakespeare said, pointing to the stairs. “We were just… Goodday.”

Clint watched them go. When their bootsteps faded, a literal dead silence fell and would not be lifted. Clint could taste the blood in the air.

He turned away. He retrieved his sidearm. He put it back in its holster where it belonged.

He sat against the wall. He crooked his knees and folded his arms and pressed his fingernails into his flesh until it hurt. 

A day, Loki had said. Maybe a day and a half. Clint had spent longer times in worse places. 

In the back of his throat, the blood tasted suspiciously like tears.


	10. Chapter 10

Anyone else would have pressed it. Natasha. Coulson. They would have sat next to him and murmured soft questions he didn’t have answers to, and he’d be grateful to them. He _was_ grateful to them. 

Loki kept his distance. Not much, the tiny cell wouldn’t allow it, but enough. He didn’t talk. He didn’t ask. He gave Clint time. 

When he was a kid, he used to run away, a lot. Every couple months, someone would leave a door open or a window unlocked and he’d be off, trying to find his way back to the house his parents used to own, or to the cemetery where they were buried, or just anywhere, really. Anywhere that wasn’t there. That was his first happy memory; running though a field of tall grass, the sky painted a hundred shades of purple, fresh air in his lungs and Barney by his side and the whole horizon stretched out in front of them. He’d felt like he could run forever. 

But as the years went on, that horizon got narrower and narrower until one day, there was nowhere left to run. Nowhere left to hide. And Clint had had a choice. 

He’d known for a while that something was going to snap. Habib had tried, and Loki had helped, in the ‘the first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have one’ sort of way. But it wasn’t enough. He went along, following orders, doing what he was told, playing the good little soldier, but he didn’t trust S.H.I.E.L.D. the way he had in the beginning. He didn’t trust _himself_. 

Maybe Sitwell was right. Maybe he _was_ compromised. 

Not being able to tell probably wasn’t a good sign. 

“It’s over now,” Loki said, almost quietly enough to avoid breaking the silence. “They’re gone.”

“Guess you were right,” Clint murmured back. “Probably should have seen that coming.”

The drone was quieter now. It had definitely been coming from the forcefields, and now there was only the one. His stomach still felt like a blender full of frogs. At least the headache was dying down. 

“This is it, you know,” Loki said.

Clint didn’t bother to open his eyes. “What was that word you made up? The one that means ‘enough with the vague bullshit’?”

He heard Loki shuffle, cotton on skin and the squeak of his bare feet on the floor. “This is why I brought you here. This moment, and the ones to come.”

Clint frowned. “Nothing’s happening.”

“No. It’s already done.”

Clint cracked an eye open, still squinting in the harsh light. Loki had shifted closer to him, shoulder to the wall instead of his back and one leg cradled tight against his chest. He smiled, the same stretched smile he’d inherited from Frigga. 

“Is that still your listening face?”

Clint nodded.


	11. Chapter 11

Loki started with the room. He talked about the first time he’d been brought here, before the loop began, gagged and in chains. He talked about endless days of boredom, flipping through the books Frigga sent him, futilely trying to scratch lines in the walls, out of spite more than anything. He described the furniture he used to have, gold, like everything in Asgard, but green, too. 

“It always was my favourite, green,” he said. “Thor was always chopping down trees. I preferred planting them. They always died, though. Just like everything else.”

He talked about Frigga. He’d been there, once and only once, when Malekith’s monster put a blade through her heart. He could never make it on time. There was always something getting in the way, some enemy that needed to be fought or Odin or Thor slowing him down with questions and anger and doubts. Once was enough, though. Once was more than enough.

“I’ve tried to save her so many times. I know how. But it’s always one of us. Her, or Father, or Thor. Jane. You. One of us _always_ dies. And it has to be her, because without Thor Earth falls and without Odin the Nine Realms shrivel and die and when it’s me, I open my eyes and it’s the eleventh of April, 2012 and I’m back to where I started. 

“I wish it could just end.”

He showed Clint the scars he’d already seen and a couple ones he hadn’t. The one on his foot from a broken bowl, shattered in grief and stepped on, unnoticed, as he raged. The ones on his wrists where a set of manacles had rubbed him raw, skin fusing to the metal so that when it was finally pulled away, bits of him went with it. He had lines running down each arm, faded to the point where Clint could hardly see them at all, where he had scratched and clawed, tearing at himself with scraps of wood and metal and clay. There had been more, once upon a time, but with each iteration the skin darkened and smoothed until, like so many things, only the memory remained. 

He didn’t cry. There was no wailing, no blubbering, no heaving breath or fractured voice. Tears glistened in his eyes like stars and fell like rain, but crying wasn’t the word. Loki was too tired, too _old_ for the likes of that. 

“I wish I were a stone,” he said, his head in Clint’s lap, Clint’s fingers combing through his hair the way Loki’s had once combed through his. “If I were a stone, I wouldn’t care. I could kill her or save her a thousand times and a thousand times again and it wouldn’t matter.”

“I wish she wouldn’t come,” he said, standing now, pacing, too few strides from one side of the cell to the other. “Sometimes she doesn’t. I can’t figure out why. I say the same thing every time, I do the same thing, but sometimes she comes and sometimes she doesn’t. It doesn’t make any damn _sense_.”

“I wish I could do this alone,” he said, mumbled into Clint’s shoulder as Clint massaged the bumblebees out of Loki’s hand. “I wish I didn’t need you. But I do.”

Clint looked down and Loki looked up. There was resentment in his eyes, and grief. Mostly there was exhaustion, a need deeper than hunger or thirst that went all the way down, through the masks and the lies and the pageantry. 

Clint got it. Finally, there was something he could actually _do_.

Loki tasted like winter.


	12. Chapter 12

Everything about Loki was cold. His lips, his breath, his tears where they soaked through Clint’s jacket. It felt better than Clint had any right to say.

His bruised hand came up, sliding around the back of Clint’s neck like it belonged there. The other held Clint’s arm in a grip tight enough to make his bones ache. He’d imagined what kissing Loki would feel like so many times and it was everything he’d thought it would be, like drinking clean river water on a hot spring day. 

And then Loki shoved him, pushed him away, pushed him off, and his head cracked against the wall and by the time the stars subsided Loki was on the other side of the room, curled into the corner like a wounded animal. Clint didn’t understand.

And then he did.

 _Compromised_.


	13. Chapter 13

Time passed. There was no way of knowing how much. Every moment seemed like months.

Clint slept. There wasn’t anything else to do. When he woke up, there was food; meat stew and oat bread, cheese and sweet cloudy ale and strange little dried fish spread with butter like crackers. He hadn’t had such a good meal in a long, long time, but he left half of it on the plate. 

He got up. Paced. Ran into the same problem as Loki, compounded by the bubble of ice dividing Loki’s half from his. He did push-ups, sit-ups, anything to pass the time. Loki remained utterly still. Every once in a while, he thought he felt the man’s gaze, but when he looked, Loki’s head remained on his arms, turned away to the empty hall. His armour had re-appeared, simpler and darker but just as thick. 

Clint was in the middle of stripping down and reassembling his gun for the third time when Thor finally arrived. He was draped in a black cloak, and lightning flashed in his eyes.

Loki finally raised his head, stretching out into a more languorous pose as Thor approached. “Hello, Brother,” he said with a sigh. “I would say I told you so, but alas, our dear father never gave me the opportunity.” 

“I have not come to play games,” Thor said darkly. “I would offer you a far richer sacrament.”

“Go on.”

Thor paced around the cell to get as close to Loki as possible. Clint slotted the barrel back into the slide, popped in the recoil spring, locked it into place. 

“I know you seek vengeance as much as I do,” Thor said. “You help me escape Asgard, and I will grant it to you. Vengeance.”

Loki paused for effect. Clint could see the gears turning in his head, but knew they weren’t real. The decision had been made a hundred lifetimes ago. “And afterward?”

“I will do what I can,” Thor promised.

“Which may not be much, if you’re in here beside me,” Loki pointed out. He clambered to his feet to look his brother in the eye. “When do we start?”

Thor smiled. There was nothing in it Clint would have ever called joy.

Thor’s fingers traced a pattern on the golden barrier and it descended in an effervescent shimmer. Clint fit the slide back into place, inserted his clip, and rose to follow.

Thor shook his head. “No. You will remain here. I’ll not have another mortal’s blood on my hands.”

Clint couldn’t say he was surprised. The day of disappointments would not end. 

He could have sat back down. He could have broken into song, or put a bullet in his brain pan. It didn’t matter. Loki had brought him here to see him through the day, and he’d done that, however badly. His part was over.

But.

He’d had a choice, when the horizon ran out. He could have taken the money. Barney wanted him to, _begged_ him to, yammering on about fair dues and all the doors that money could have opened for them. He could have just kept his damn fool mouth shut and saved himself a lot of bruises. It didn’t matter, not at the time. He was a kid with a bad past and a talent for archery he hadn’t quite figured out yet, and Jack was one of the best swordsmen in the world. Take, talk, whichever way, the Carson Carnival was shit out of luck. Jack was going to get what was his.

Clint had kicked Jack in the balls and ran to Johnny Law as quickly as his little legs could carry him. It had put him in the hospital, cost him Buck, cost him Barney, and the damn circus went under anyway. But he’d never regretted it. Not once.

Something was going to break, but it wasn’t going to be him. Not today. 

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” he said. “I’m either putting an arrow through Dobby’s head or a bullet through yours. Your choice.”

Thor cracked another smile, this one somehow more genuine than the last. “Was that supposed to be a threat?”

“Kinda sounded that way, didn’t it,” Clint deadpanned. “You going to give me a bow or not?”

Thor laughed, and Clint knew he was in. 

He felt Loki staring as he brushed past him into the corridor. Clint didn’t spare him a glance. 

After all, it went both ways.


	14. Chapter 14

As they walked briskly through the twisting corridors, Thor explained the plan. Clint tried to follow along, but there were just enough foreign words to throw him off. Someone named Sif was going to rescue Jane from something called the Einherjar, Volstagg was going to help them steal a Svartalfr ship, blabbity blabbity blah bifrost Fandral Svartalfheim. He was beginning to regret not reading up on Norse mythology, although given what he’d gleaned from the fount of knowledge that was Wikipedia that wouldn’t necessarily have helped. He highly doubted Loki had ever given birth to an eight-legged horse. 

The Asgardian was different, the last few minutes. He lagged behind, bickering with Thor but watching Clint. Every so often he’d say something that was obviously bait—pop culture references Thor couldn’t possibly understand, call-backs to conversations they’d had, terrible bird puns—but Clint refused to bite. He’d spent yesterday being ignored, and karma was a bitch.

Visiting Asgard’s armoury would have been the highlight of the trip if Thor hadn’t stayed behind to keep watch. The room was massive, long and comparatively low, the ribs of the vaulted ceiling gilded and patterned to turn the wavering light of the torches on the walls into glitter. Clint had never seen so much ancient weaponry in one place, and certainly not in such good condition. The blades were smooth, cold steel without so much as a nick, the shafts of the spears were so clean they could have been forged yesterday, and the bows… 

Asgard was officially Disneyland. 

Most of them were longbows, almost as tall as Clint was and brassy gold, patterned like the ceiling and the round shields. He plucked one off the rack, looping it around his leg to see if he could string it. 

“Clinton,” Loki said quietly. “What are you doing?”

All the strength and bodyweight he could muster barely got the bow to bend. “Trying to find a bow that doesn’t require the strength of a literal god to use. So far, not so good.”

“This isn’t like you.”

Clint put the longbow back and found another, a foot shorter and made of a bluish silver. “I’m an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Saving the world is kind of in my job description.”

“You’re angry, and I don’t understand why.”

“Yeah,” Clint said. “You wouldn’t.”

He didn’t look, but he could feel Loki’s jaw tighten, the subtle puckered expression he got on the rare occasions things didn’t go his way. 

“You don’t explain yourself to me.” This bow bent better, but not enough. Clint put it back. “I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

“If this is about what you did—“

“You mean when you gave me concussion 2.0? No. For once in your life, something isn’t about you. Get over it.”

As Clint reached up to pluck a black-and-gold composite off the wall, Loki touched his arm. Clint froze.

“There’s nothing you need prove, Clinton,” Loki said, in a tone that might have been gentle if it weren’t for the undercurrent of frustration. “Especially not to me.”

Clint almost, almost laughed. 

Nine times out of ten, Loki would have hit the nail on the head. Nine times out of ten, Clint’s swagger was like Loki’s down-the-nose look, a veneer of confidence over a pit of doubt. Everything was always in question, always; prove your loyalty, prove your sanity, prove your obedience and your strength and your abilities. Prove you’re worth the effort, earn your keep, one slip, one missed shot, and you’ve gone from the best there is to a star on a wall without a name. Follow the chain of command. _You’re compromised_. 

He was. There was no hiding from it now. The lump on the back of his head pounded and it felt like the cracker fish had come back to life and were trying to swim up his throat. The chill of Loki’s skin through his jacket gobbled up his nerve endings, his attention, until the wood and metal under his hand wasn’t even there and he might as well have been floating. 

He would have shot Odin. He would have shot Thor. He’d nearly shot himself with that ricochet. 

“I’m not making any sense, am I?” he only half joked. 

“No, you’re not.” Loki’s hand slid up, his palm cool on the back of Clint’s sweat-damp neck. “Stay. Rest. Thor and I can handle ourselves.”

Clint cracked a smile. “Thought you said you needed me.”

“I do. For tomorrow, and all the days to come. Not now.”

Clint’s eyes were closed. He couldn’t remember shutting them. He hadn’t remembered lying down, either, or drawing his gun. The drone was still there, gnawing at the center of his spine. 

“I can’t,” he said. 

“Yes, you can.” 

“No. You don’t get it.” Clint shrugged off Loki’s hand. “I _can’t_.”

He’d made his decision. And the funny thing was, it had already been made, a dozen times over. He’d made it when he’d joined S.H.I.E.L.D.. He’d made it when he tried to turn Jack in. He’d made it when he walked into Dr. Habib’s office, months and months and months ago, the day after Loki told him why his smiles were not quite sad. 

He knew it didn’t matter. The carnival closed, and people died, and in the end the best he had to look forward to was a balcony and the pavement below it. Where there was death, there would always be death. He knew. It didn’t matter

It _didn’t matter_. 

“I’m not like you,” he said, finally letting himself look Loki in the eye. “I’ve only got one shot. When I kick it, I won’t wake up. I’ve spent the last year trying to think ten ahead, trying to think like you do, but I _can’t_. Tomorrow isn’t here for me, not yet. Right here, right now… this is all I have. So I have to do what’s right. Even if it’s wrong. It’s that or give up, and I’m not the giving up kind of guy.” 

It took a moment, gears turning in Loki’s head for real, before a smile flashed across his face like cracking ice. “No, you’re really not.” 

Clint pulled down the composite bow. It bent, just enough, and when he got it strung it drew like a dream. 

“Cock-a-doodle-doo,” he said, and let his imaginary arrow fly. 

Loki didn’t ask.


	15. Chapter 15

They arrived at what the rendezvous just as Jane did, accompanied by a pretty dark-haired woman in armour. Jane rushed into Thor’s arms and they embraced, holding each other close like it’d been years since they’d last seen each other, not hours. Irritation flashed across the woman’s face before she even glanced at Loki, and then to Clint, where it deepened into a frown. 

“Why is the Midgardian here?” she asked as she looked back to Thor. “He will only get in the way.”

“Nice to meet you too, princess,” Clint drawled. Jane turned to follow is voice and gasped.

“Oh my god, Clint! What happened to your face? Did Odin _beat_ you?”

In all honesty, Clint had forgotten about the punch and the hot mark it had left on his cheek. “I’m alright.”

“I am not a princess,” the woman said. “I am Lady Sif, of—“

“Einherjar coming,” Loki said airily. “Thought you ought to know.”

Sure enough, the clank and stomp of soldiers’ boots echoed down the hall from whence the two women had come. 

“Thank you, Professor Quirrell.” Clint drew a long black arrow from the quiver on his back, but before he fired ‘Lady Sif’ stopped him.

“I’ll hold them off,” she said, then looked to Thor. “Take her.”

Thor nodded and thanked her, and then they were running. 

Countless twists and turns later, Thor led them into one of the largest rooms Clint had ever seen. Massive pillars segmented the sunlight like thousand-year-old redwoods, half of them crumbled and smashed. At the end of the destruction lay what Clint could only describe as a spaceship. 

“Hello, beautiful,” Clint whistled, his eyes wandering from one end of the sleek black knife-blade to the other. “Where have you been all my life?”

“The endless void of space,” Loki said. “And no, you cannot have one.”

“Says you. Christmas is coming, and I believe.”

“What’s this I see?” A bearded warrior—the walking stereotype from the dungeons, in fact— lumbered forward, a battle axe resting on his shoulder. “Kissed and made up, have you?”

“What can I say, it gets lonely in prison,” Clint quipped. “We _can_ fly this thing, right? It’s not DNA encoded, species locked, linux, anything like that?”

“Of course we can fly it,” Thor said. “How hard can it be?”

As it turned out, _hard_.

“Don’t hit it,” Loki urged as Thor smacked his palms down on the console like a frustrated child. “Just press it gently.”

“I _am_ pressing it gently,” Thor gritted as the sounds of metal on metal clanged through the closed bulkhead. “It’s not _working_.”

“For god’s sake, it’s right there.” Clint pointed.

“How could you _possibly_ know that?” Thor asked.

“Because it’s got an LED behind it,” Clint said, leaning around Thor to push the button, “and lights mean ‘on’.”

Instantly, what little light there was went out. Clint’s heart jerked in his chest. Then, with a hum, a globe of pale blue holograms appeared around them, showing the blasted throne and a myriad of lines and symbols Clint didn’t understand. Thor laughed victoriously and clapped Clint on the shoulder. 

“Well done, Clinton Barton!”

“It’s not Clinton.” He flicked a couple of switches and turned a dial, the engines shuddering to life. “Just Clint.”

Thor frowned. “That is not what Loki calls you.”

“That’s because Loki is an asshole.”

They lifted off the ground a little more suddenly than he’d anticipated, all four of them rocking on their feet as Clint turned the dial back a few notches. Thor took over the controls and Clint let him; he was pretty sure he could have figured out up and down, but he’d also been pretty sure that dial was the cockpit lights.”

“You never had a problem with it before,” Loki groused as Thor steered them around—and through—the columns. 

“Only three people have ever called me Clinton. You, my mom, and Stanley Heckdon. He rhymed it with ‘kitten’, which, admittedly, is better than what he did with my last name.”

“Clinton the kitten?” Jane said with an oddly wavering smile. “That’s adorable.”

“You okay?” Clint asked as they broke out into glorious daylight, the glittering city rendered in a sad skeleton of black and blue. 

“Yeah, I’m…,” she said, rocking a little on her feet. “I’m fine.”

Loki gave him a nudge, but he didn’t really need it. He was already stepping closer, putting his hand on her shoulder. Even so, he barely made it on time—a turret opened fire on them and suddenly they were plunging down towards the city. Pulling up was even worse, and Clint damn near fell himself, ending up kneeling with Jane sprawled awkwardly in his arms. 

“Jane!” Thor cried in alarm, taking his eyes off the projections.

She raised her hand. “I’m okay.”

“I’ve got her,” Clint assured him. “Keep your eyes on the sky.”

“At least she didn’t detonate this time,” Loki said dryly. 

The city’s defenses continued firing upon them, Thor ducking and diving and sending them into spin after spin. The fish crackers were alive and well and doing the rumba. The smell of hot metal and meat clinging to Jane like perfume didn’t help. They got hit, then crashed through a building, Clint’s teeth rattling in his head. 

“Aren’t there stabilizers or something?” Clint called to Loki over the screech of rock on metal. 

“How should I know,” both brothers said at once. The scathing looks they shot each other were a memory Clint would cherish forever.

“So much for Asgardian superiority.”

A trio of what looked like flying rowboats fell in behind them, opening fire almost immediately. Shockwaves shuddered through them as beam after beam struck the ship. Thor turned them towards a tunnel, managing to slice through the narrow gap, along with the neck of the statue flanking it. Another turret found them on the other side, though, and Thor only barely managed to evade its fire.

“Well done,” Loki said. “You just decapitated your grandfather.” 

By now, half the blue globe was marred by streaks and blocks of flashing red. Clint wasn’t sure how much longer the ship could hold together. They were also running out of places to run, skimming out over the open water with nothing to hide behind. There was supposed to be another ship waiting for them, but from what Clint could see, they were on their own.

Loki noticed as well. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Brother, but shouldn’t Fandral have arrived by now?”

“Yes, he should have,” Thor said. 

“And yet he hasn’t.”

Another bolt slammed into them and Thor grit his teeth. “Thank you for the commentary Loki, it’s not at all distracting.”

“You did tell him the right place, didn’t you? You’ve always been so terrible when it comes to giving directions.”

“Open the door,” Thor ordered, flicking through screens trying to find the autopilot. 

“If Fandral isn’t here by the time we jump—“

“He will be.” The biggest shudder yet slammed through them and an entire section of the HUD went dark. “Open the door.”

Clint helped Jane to her feet. When Loki opened the hatch, the wind sucked the breath right out of him, howling and sending the others’ hair flying. Thor finished punching in instructions and scooped Jane up in his arms. 

“If we fall to our deaths I’ll never forgive you,” Loki shouted over the wind.

“You know, for a super-advanced alien race, you guys are sure missing a lot of really basic technology,” Clint said. “Radios. Parachutes. Haircuts.”

“He’ll be there,” Thor insisted. 

“Well, then,” Loki said, walking towards Clint. “No time like the present.”

“No,” Clint said, catching on immediately. “No, no, no, don’t you—“

It was too late. Loki bent, put his shoulder to Clint’s stomach and picked him up like a fussy two-year-old sack of potatoes. “Alley-oop.”

“ _God damn_ —”

Loki spun on the ball of his foot and jumped.


	16. Chapter 16

He’d dreamt of falling all his life. Clouds rushing by, a cold wind sucking the air out of his lungs, the ground rushing up to meet him. He always woke up just before he hit, sometimes breathing hard and fast, sometimes smiling. 

“Loki,” he shouted as they fell. “I don’t see a bo—“

They didn’t hit bottom. Bottom hit them. Clint tumbled ass over teakettle, the wind knocked clean out of him and braided metal scraping his scrabbling hands raw. Suddenly he was staring at the sky, watching the elven ship soar off without him, the three attack boats still in hot pursuit. 

“Hello again,” a familiar voice said. “Nice of you to drop by.”

If Clint could breathe, he would have cursed.

“Came in a little hard there,” said Fandral, who was also Blonde Shakespeare, because of course he was. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Loki clipped. “Clint—?” 

“Yeah,” Clint croaked. Half his ass was hanging over the gunwale. He rolled onto his knees, cradling his ribs. “I’m good.”

“You’re late,” Thor said, lighting on the deck like a body-building butterfly and laying Jane down on a bench.

“You’re early,” Fandral replied. “Anyway it all worked out in the end, didn’t it? Loki, are you sure you’re alright, you’re looking a little peaked.” 

Looking up, Clint immediately saw what Fandral meant. Loki was sitting hunched on one of the woven metal benches, one hand gripping the gunwale and the other his right calf. He was paler than ever, drawn and pained, and when he smiled it was tight. 

“Your concern is appreciated.” Loki pushed himself to his feet and waved Fandral away from the rudder. “Not so much as your punctuality would have been, but still, it’s the thought that counts.”

“You were early,” Fandral replied as he surrendered his position.

Loki guided them low over the water, sending up spray as they turned towards the looming mountains. It wasn’t long before another ship managed to find them, following in their wake and spitting out gleaming shafts of gold. Loki wavered the boat back and forth to avoid the fire, then went up to their level, gliding through the cool salty air.

“That would be my cue, then,” Fandral said, grabbing a rope.

“Take care not to miss it,” Thor teased.

Rolling his eyes, Fandral stepped up onto the gunwale. “Fine. I admit it. I was late. I am _forever_ shamed. This day shall live in infamy and songs of ‘Fandral the Tardy’ will be sung for a thousand years.”

“’Fandral the Flippant’, perhaps,” Thor said with a smile. “Thank you, my friend.”

“You’re welcome,” Fandral said. “For Asgard.”

He dropped off the edge and fell into a swing, using his momentum to spring up into the other craft. The guards didn’t stand a chance, and less than a blink later Fandral was shooting them a quick salute as they sped away. Clint returned it automatically.

“Loki?” Thor said. The mountains were considerably closer, filling up the sky. Clint could just barely see a hole through the rock, barely wider than their new ship.

“If it were easy, everyone would do it,” Loki replied with a stiff grin. 

“Might want to slow down a little,” Clint said, clinging to the side of the boat.

“No, no, no, slow is boring,” Loki said. “They’ll hit us if we’re slow. We’ve got to go _fast_.”

“Seriously?” Clint groaned. “You’re making Sonic the Hedgehog references now?”

“Follow me, set me free,” Loki sang, grinning from ear to ear. “Trust me and we will escape from the city!”

“Are the both of you mad?” Thor shouted. 

The hole loomed, even smaller than it looked from the distance. Clint let go of the gunwale and held on to the bench instead. “What tipped you off?”

“I’ll make it through,” Loki half sung, half promised, the tune leaking away as the rock flew towards them. “Follow me.”

The world went dark. 

Sparks flashed. They careened from side to side, ricocheting off the walls. Other lights sparked in the shadows, streaks of purple and white, a growing tunnel of radiance forming around them like a wild version of the bifrost. Clint’s eyes burned in the glare, and then—

Then they were bouncing over alien terrain, utterly, completely desolate and as far from the lush beauty of Asgard as it was possible to get. 

Loki pulled them up into a smooth glide and sang, “Tada.”

Clint sucked in a lungful of ash, smoke and centuries-old dust. 

“You know,” he panted. “I _really_ hate you sometimes.” 

Loki grinned.


	17. Chapter 17

Svartalfheim was a miracle and a terror all at once. Bathed in the sickly light of an ever-eclipsed sun, the empty plains went on and on and on, until quite suddenly they were floating through a sea of ruined warships. Clint watched the derelicts drift by in silent awe. He couldn’t imagine war on this scale. He sincerely hoped he’d never have to.

Jane wasn’t moving. Thor had found a blanket and tucked it tenderly around her shoulders, but she barely acknowledged him. The smell was getting stronger, a thundercloud building in the distance. 

“She’ll be okay, right?” Clint asked Loki under his breath. “You said we were going to save her life, but that not the same thing.”

“No, it’s not,” Loki said with a sigh. “She’ll never be the same. Nothing will. Whether it be better or worse, well… that depends on your point of view.”

“Thanks,” Clint said darkly. “That was really comforting.”

Loki shot him a look. “I wasn’t trying to be comforting, I was trying to be honest. If you’re going to be an idiot, you might as well know what you’re being and idiot about.” 

“Loki,” Thor said, standing up and walking down to their end of the boat. “Clint Barton. We must speak.”

“How is she?” Loki asked as Thor sat across from Clint. 

“Stronger than she looks,” Thor said. “How long have you been courting?”

Blood rushed to Clint’s face so fast he felt dizzy. “What?”

“I saw you in the armoury, but I would have known even had I not. Loki treats you with too much regard for you to be merely friend or companion.”

Clint blinked. “What?”

“We’re not together, Thor,” Loki said with a sigh. 

“I do not sit in judgment, Brother. It is no easy thing to love a mortal, as I know all too well. Knowing you have found your heart’s desire—“

“ _What_?”

“—gives me great solace indeed.”

“Thor,” Loki patiently said again. “We’re not together.” 

“You think he treats me with _regard_?” Clint asked, his eyebrows raised. 

Thor smiled. “Comparatively speaking, yes.”

“He’s been calling me Clinton for a _year_.”

“That was—“ Loki began before dropping his voice. “That was an attempt to separate you from certain other individuals and you didn’t seem to mind.”

“Stanley wrote a song about me, Loki. _A song_. It wasn’t flattering.”

“ _How was I supposed to_ —“ Loki cut himself off again. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you.”

“You have no idea.”

“Look at you,” Thor said with a laugh. “If you insist on continuing to deny the obvious, then so be it. There’s no need. I’m better with secrets than you think.”

“Thor, listen to me.” Loki turned to his brother as much as his position at the rudder allowed. “We. Are not. Together. There is no secret to keep.”

A crease appearing between his brows, Thor looked to Clint. “Truly?”

Clint thought about that moment, that heartbeat, when Loki’s lips had touched his, and the moment that followed it. He shook his head. “Sorry, Yente.”

Thor frowned, then scowled, then shook his head right back. “Why in Odin’s name not?”

Clint looked at Loki. Loki didn’t look back. Apparently that was all Thor needed to know.

“I thought better of you, Brother. You are many things, but I never counted a coward among them.”

“Do not speak of what you do not understand,” Loki warned. 

Thor shifted, gesturing to where Jane lay, curled and still. “Look at her and say that I do not.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Ever since I returned to Asgard I have been told to cast Jane from my heart. That loving her would lead only to sorrow.”

“And it will,” Loki snapped. “Today, tomorrow, a hundred years from now. It’s nothing. A heartbeat. You will _never_ be ready. One day, you will wake up, and she will be gone, and you will be left behind.”

The wind on this world was hot and dry, and it clung to Clint’s throat the way the blood had. There was nothing to look at. The ruins were empty horrors, the sky was a black bruise and for all the horizon stretching away in every direction, there was nowhere to go. 

“Surrender is not in my nature, Brother,” Thor said quietly. “Nor in yours.”

Clint thought about the skeleton that had come out of the portal, a pile of skin and bones he’d lifted as easily as Loki had lifted him. He thought about the month of silence, stillness, dull blue eyes staring at nothing and the incessant beeping of the heart monitor that was the only indication that Loki was even alive. He thought about how long it would take to get that way, ten minutes at a time. 

Turning his attention back to the cracked devastation before them, Loki murmured, “Perhaps you don’t know me as well as you think.”


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is basically where it all goes to shit. This chapter has canonical sort-of-death, and the next two have extreme suicidal ideation and an attempt. Y'all are warned.

They’d been floating along in complete silence for what felt like hours when Jane opened her eyes. 

Thor said her name as she sat up, but she ignored him, looking out over the desolate horizon. The rest of them followed her gaze and finally saw it; the Dark Elves’ ship, descending slowly through the inky black clouds. 

“Malekith,” Jane breathed. 

The blender in Clint’s stomach sped up. He flexed his bow hand and took a deep breath of the ashy air and was ready. They had a mission to do. 

They left the ship in a gully and picked their way up to the top of a rise overlooking Malekith’s landing zone, Thor helping Jane through the biting gritty wind with an arm thrown over her shoulders. When Loki reached the edge, Clint crouched beside him, looking down into the valley below. Malekith’s goonies were the spitting image of the illustrations in Odin’s book, and Malekith himself, burnt and disfigured, was like something out of a nightmare. None of them held a candle to the blue-eyed monster. They didn’t have Frigga’s blood on their hands.

“Alright, are you ready?” Thor asked Jane. 

She nodded. 

“Cool,” Clint said, cracking his neck. “Let’s be bad guys.”

Thor and Loki stepped forward, standing in center stage where Malekith could see them. Clint hung back with Jane, giving her shoulder a reassuring squeeze and receiving a wan smile in return.

“Sorry about all this.”

“Sorry?” Clint scoffed. “Are you kidding? This is the most fun I’ve had all week.”

Jane’s smile brightened, just a bit, like the eclipsed sun peeking through the scudding smoky clouds. Loki held his hand out, and Thor handed him a shimmering black blade. When he didn’t let go, Loki’s gaze dropped.

“Thor, I—“

“You’re right,” Thor said. “Today is a heartbeat.”

As Loki looked back up at him, Thor released the dagger and pressed his palm to Loki’s chest.

“Only a fool would stop his heart for fear that it will one day stop itself. And you are no fool. I may not know you as well as I think, but of that, I have no doubt.”

Loki shook his head. Clint shifted his hand to Jane’s back. 

“Sentiment,” Loki said, and drove the dagger into Thor’s gut.

Thor tumbled down the cliff like a stone, hammer slipping from his grasp. Loki leapt after him. He landed hard, favouring his right leg, but didn’t slow, stalking down the hill like a predator chasing after its prey. Jane screamed Thor’s name, teetering at the edge of the abyss before Clint gave her a shove, sending her skittering and following close in her wake.

The moment Thor came to a painful halt, Loki was on him.

“You really think I cared about Frigga,” he mocked, loudly. “About any of you.”

Loki’s kick sent Thor spinning. Clint leapt over a rock, pebbles flying out from under his feet as he landed and slowing him down. Jane glanced back at him, but he managed to catch up, paying as much attention to the slippery ground as he could spare. 

“All I ever wanted was you and Odin dead at my feet,” Loki continued, voice rough and gruff and villainous, the auditory equivalent of his black leather and bronze. Thor reached for his hammer, and in one smooth motion, Loki cut off his hand. 

Thor screamed. The hammer flew past him, sending up a spray of dirt and dust. Before Jane could rush to his side Clint had her, lifting her bodily off the ground as she kicked and struggled. Her elbow came down hard, right on the bruise Loki had left on his cheek, and he grit his teeth. 

“Malekith!” Loki shouted over the wind, his mask of arrogance firmly in place. “I am Loki of Jotunheim, and I bring you a gift.”

On cue, Clint shoved Jane hard, sending her sprawling at the approaching Dark Elf’s feet. A pang of guilt shot through him at her grunt of pain, but considering the side of his face was still throbbing they were probably even. 

“I ask only one thing in return,” Loki said. “A good seat from which to watch Asgard burn.” 

Up close and personal, Malekith’s lieutenant was all the more terrifying. He’d never actually seen anything that _alien_ before, not living, anyway. It was the alligator to the Destroyer’s crocodile and Clint wanted it dead. 

It spoke in a strange lilting language Clint didn’t recognize, its voice like tearing meat. Whatever it said seemed to put Malekith at ease, and the dark elf strode forward to tower above his fallen enemy. 

“Look at me,” the Dark Elf said, voice every bit as frightening as his pet’s. 

When Thor didn’t comply, Malekith kicked the Asgardian over onto his back. Then, keeping his eyes locked on Thor’s, he raised his hand. 

Jane lifted off the ground. Wind tossed her hair and the air filled with whispers. The Aether’s stink grew stronger and stronger as Jane’s arms were spread, some mystical power binding her to an invisible cross. His hand itched for his bow. Not yet. 

The Aether poured out of Jane like tendrils of blood, seeping from her eyes, her mouth, her pores. It coalesced in the air, then branched out towards Malekith, twining around and into his outstretched arm. Clint’s heart beat faster. Not yet. 

With a twist of his wrist, Malekith separated Jane from the Aether. She tumbled to the ground, leaving the reddish-black cloud exposed. 

“Loki!” Thor shouted. “Now!”

With a flash of golden light, Loki dismissed the illusion of Thor’s severed arm, allowing the hammer to fly into his grasp. By the time the handle hit his palm, Clint and Loki were already moving, rushing to Jane’s side. Clint slid in the gravel next to her and Loki threw himself over them both, just as a bolt of white lightning split the air. Ozone buzzed, overwhelming the Aether’s acrid smell. 

Electricity crackled. The red tendrils rose towards the clouds as if fleeing from the white-hot energy. Little by little, the light began to overwhelm the shadows, surging over and around it, engulfing it, and then—

The detonation hit Clint like a sledgehammer, crushing him into the ground. His ears rang with the crack of it. As the dust settled, Clint expected Loki to rise, but he didn’t. He remained crouched, watching with flinty eyes. 

When the crimson shards began to rise into the air, Clint didn’t understand.

The shards drew together, swirling around Malekith and sinking into him, even faster than before. They poured into him, the same way they had poured out of Jane, but with ten times the violence.

“What?” Clint mouthed, leaning out as if a different angle would make this make sense. Loki put a hand on his shoulder to keep him down, and Clint stared at him. “How…?“ 

The last shard slid under Malekith’s skin and it was done. When the elf opened his eyes, they were blood red, and his skin was as black as the soil they stood on. 

That was supposed to work. _That was supposed to work_. Loki’d said they’d go to Svartalfheim, fight Malekith, and Thor would take him out. 

_Why the hell didn’t that work?_

Malekith turned and walked away without giving any of them another glance. Three of the goons rushed towards them, weapons drawn. Three fluid swings of Thor’s hammer and they were down before Clint could even get to his feet. And the instant he did, Loki was shoving him again, pushing him and Jane out of the way just in time to avoid a cascading implosion. The swirl of blue darkness tugged like a black hole, and even out of its range Clint felt it tugging at his bones. Loki lifted clear off the ground, soaring backwards, and before he knew what he was doing Clint snagged his wrist. 

The pull was impossible. Clint dug his feet into the loose earth, pulled as hard as he possibly could, so hard he thought his arm would rip free of his shoulder, but he still lost ground. The dirt slid under his feet, then slid away as he was sucked into the gravity well. Loki’s eyes were wide, surprised and confused, and that didn’t make sense, but nothing did. 

Just as his grip was about to give Thor appeared like a red bullet, snagging Loki out of the air and pulling them both to safety. Clint hit the ground hard, again, his ribs and his head and his arm, now, all of them screaming, but there wasn’t time to acknowledge the pain. Malekith was already boarding his ship. They could still make it. 

Thor flew off and Clint pulled himself to his feet, grabbing the black-and-gold composite and one of the black-fletched arrows as he rose. A quartet of elves was approaching them, circling them warily, keeping their empty black eyes on Clint’s bow and the knife in Loki’s hand. He drew, nocked, but didn’t fire. He only had twelve arrows, and he didn’t know how much damage a dark elf could take. 

Two of them made their move at the same time, one lunging for Loki and the other for Clint. Clint’s died first, an arrow bursting out the back of its spine. Loki’s hit the ground half a heartbeat later, throat slit all the way to bone. The other two jumped him, taking advantage of the half a second it took Clint to draw another arrow. Loki blocked and parried, looking to take them out with ease, but as he turned to counter one of their blows, pain washed across his face and he staggered, his right leg giving out beneath him. 

By pure luck, the blow Loki had meant to counter flew over his head. Clint unleashed an arrow that sailed through the attacking elf’s eye socket and emerged quivering from the back of his skull. There wasn’t time for another shot, though, the last elf raising his weapon to dispatch Loki while he was still on his knees. 

Clint swung his bow as hard as he could. The limb struck the elf in the temple, sending him reeling, and something in Clint’s arm tore. The impact was the last thing he felt. 

Loki recovered before the elf did, pulling him against his chest and slamming his knife through his armour. Spots danced before Clint’s eyes. His arm hung uselessly by his side, his bow—just as broken—slipping from his limp fingers. 

“Clint—“ Loki said.

But there _was no time_. The ship was gone, Clint didn’t know where, and Malekith was nowhere in sight, but his monster remained, beating Thor into the ground like a sledgehammer. Loki snagged an elvish sword, slung his arm around Clint’s shoulders and they ran. 

The creature pounded its fists into Thor over and over, massive blows that would have turned Clint to jelly. He drew his sidearm, flipping off the safety. He had nine rounds and then he was down to throwing his arrows like darts, which might actually be more effective. 

Loki slipped from his grip, gesturing for Clint to go one way while he limped in the other. The same shimmer that had accompanied his many costume changes washed over him and he vanished, just as Frigga had. Clint gave him half a second, then leveled his weapon at the beast’s horned head and let off two rounds. The bullets didn’t do a damn thing, but they got its attention.

“Yeah, you didn’t like that, did you?” Clint shouted. “Want some more? Come get it, you ugly son of a bitch, I can do this all day.”

He had no idea if the thing spoke English. Even if it did, it did not respond to taunts, regarding him with the same flat look it had dismissed him with the first time. Not that it mattered. Clint was just buying time.

The sword sprouted from its chest like magic, Loki shimmering back into existence just in time to ram it home. The creature’s back arched as it staggered to face its new attacker. But it didn’t go down. 

The world stopped.

Clint saw Loki gasp. Saw the tip of the blade come out his back. Heard Thor scream, again, but so much worse. 

It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. 

The beast shoved Loki away. He landed hard on his back, limbs curling in agony. It walked towards him, moving in for the kill, and Clint was firing again and again but the bullets bounced off and eventually his gun ran dry and clicked, clicked, clicked. 

“See you in hell, monster,” Loki cursed. 

A red light flashed at its hip. The hulk tried to rip it off, but too late. Strings of fire looped out, encircling the creature in a cocoon that ripped and tore and crushed. Its limbs crumbled in first, bone and chitinous shell cracking as it roared. Then its face caved in and it was silent. A collection of assorted parts disappearing into the void. 

The moment the glow blinked out, Thor rushed to Loki’s side. Clint didn’t move. He couldn’t. His feet were rooted to the ground, rooted to the hope that any moment now he’d get the joke. 

Loki’s skin had gone greyish white. Thor picked him up, cradling him in his arms, muttering ‘no’ over and over and over. Clint wasn’t holding his gun anymore. He had no idea when he’d dropped it. 

“Loki, what have you done, Loki,” Thor ground, patting at the wound as if that could staunch the flow of blood. “ _Loki, what have you done._ ”

Loki swallowed, struggling to speak. “Seems I’m a fool after all.”

“Stay with me,” Thor demanded, his voice thick and shaky.

Jane sprinted over, sliding to a halt next to Clint. She looked at him, but he didn’t look back, couldn’t tear his eyes away. A dark veiny texture was spreading over Loki’s skin like rot. It was eating him away, little by little, with every laboured breath.

There was something. There had to be. Any second now Thor would pull out some technomagic McGuffin and Loki would be okay. Some spell, or a brigade of nano-nurses, or just some god damn bandages to stuff in the hole and stop the bleeding. Something. _Anything._ How could they build Asgard without figuring out how to fix a chest wound?

Or radios. Or parachutes. 

“I’m sorry,” Loki gulped, as if he had anything to be sorry for. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Thor shushed him. Clint’s lungs burned. His stomach was still for the first time in days, frozen into a lump of ice that grew bigger in step with the puddle of red. Jane touched his arm.

“You should go to him,” she said quietly.

‘ _For tomorrow, and all the days to come_ ’. That’s what Loki had said. This wasn’t the end, this wasn’t, _couldn’t_ , they were supposed to… 

No. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t right at all.

“It’s alright,” Thor said, and the moment Clint heard his voice he knew it was over. “I’ll tell Father what you did here today.”

Loki could barely speak. He was calm now. No more shaking, no more pain. 

“I didn’t do it for him,” he whispered back.

It was the last thing he said.

Thor thundered. The gray taint to Loki’s skin turned blue-black, flowing over him like oil. His eyes were closed, expression peaceful. Beautiful, in the way of death.

He wasn’t. Clint, Clint knew that. Somewhere else, he was just waking up, and they were meeting all over again, starting, right from the beginning, and it was going to go according to plan. He’d do what he was told, he’d listen, he wouldn’t—

But it wasn’t _him_. Wouldn’t be. Never had been. He was the odd man out, the one that needed a different name, and now Loki could go back to the Clint he knew, the Clint he loved, the Clint he missed so god damn much. And it would all. Start. Over. 

Somewhere else.

Loki was gone. But Clint? 

Clint didn’t get to wake up.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the next contain extreme suicidal ideation and an attempt. Y'all are warned.

The wind whipped up, twirling the earth into a pitch black hurricane. The grit stung Clint’s skin. All the aches and pains were coming back to him now, the bruises from where he’d landed hard again and again, the hot agony in his shoulder where it met the icy numbness of his arm. He stared at Loki’s corpse, silence ringing in his head.

He didn’t notice Jane speaking to him until she touched his arm, the contact sending waves of blinding pain rippling through him. By the time he’d swallowed back the nausea, he’d completely missed what she said.

“What?” he croaked. 

“We have to get to shelter,” she shouted over the gathering storm. 

He stared at her. Taking the words, understanding what they meant—it was like trying to swim in marmalade. Eventually she gave up, taking him by the good hand and leading him up towards the hillside. 

The tempest got stronger, so strong the world turned into a haze of black and Jane couldn’t hold onto him anymore. She huddled by Thor’s side, leaving Clint to plod along behind them, leaning hard into the wind. It didn’t occur to him to stop. It didn’t occur to him to ask for help. He didn’t know where they were going and he didn’t care. 

There was a cave. Without the wind, Clint stumbled, hitting the wall and collapsing down into a heap. 

It was too quiet. He needed the quiet in his head, not outside it. But there it went.

Thor and Jane were talking, and Clint tried to understand it, he really did. He watched their mouths move, flap flap flapping on and on until he just wanted to _scream_. None of it made a difference. Loki was dead. 

It was his fault. It had to be. He was the wild card, the only one who could still render Loki speechless, the only one who could still surprise him. He’d changed things, somehow. Made the lightning not work, made the beast stronger, made—

Loki’s leg. The bullet bounced. 

He hadn’t seen blood. He’d held Loki’s foot in his hand, traced the line of his scar, and he hadn’t seen blood, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Loki could have hidden it, under the leather, under the illusion, and with the bullet still in it wouldn’t have bled much anyway. Not until it fell out. Not until Loki jumped from a space ship and landed hard, pale and pained and clutching his calf and _oh god_ , the bullet bounced. 

“Clint Barton,” Thor said in a way that told Clint that wasn’t the first time. “Get up.”

Clint looked at him. Jane was on a cellphone. She was talking to someone named Richard. There were soda cans and shoes scattered across the floor, and Clint didn’t care. 

“Get up.” Thor jostled him with his foot. “The battle is not yet won.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Clint said. 

“It’s not going to stay open forever,” Jane called from deeper in the cave. “What should we do?”

“The Einherjar will come for him,” Thor assured her. “He’ll be alright.”

Clint blinked and they were gone. He blinked again, thinking maybe they would come back, maybe he would lose more time, maybe he would open his eyes and Loki would be standing there with a smirk and a joke. 

He wasn’t. 

It was Clint’s fault.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains extreme suicidal ideation and an attempt. Y'all are warned.

The solution was obvious. 

He had arrows. Pull one out, press the tip somewhere, to his wrist or his throat or his thigh, and push. Easy.

He’d done it before. Not with an arrow, obviously. A building. The building where he and Loki lived their perfect life. He’d stepped out onto the balcony and made his dreams of falling come true, and it had been beautiful. Why had he ever thought it wasn’t? Why had he ever been afraid?

His arms didn’t want to move. The one was broken. The other was just tired. Heavy, like the rest of him, so heavy he was about to sink into the stone, down and down and down into the center of the earth. That was alright. For once, he had all the time in the world. 

“I’m not the giving up kind of guy,” he’d said. He’d said, to the man who watched him jump. And Loki had agreed with him. He should have known better. It was the concussion. If he’d been thinking straight none of this would have happened. But he’d been thinking straight when he held a gun to a guard’s head. It all lead, one thing to another, mistake after mistake after mistake. All those choices, and he always chose the wrong thing.

It had always been Loki. His heartbeat. The moment he stepped into the world. He was why Clint had gone to Habib, he was why Clint had pushed the dreams away, the memories. He couldn’t bear the thought of causing him so much pain. But Loki was gone now, and stopping a heart that was already dead wasn’t foolish, it just _was_. 

There was an arrow in his hand. The shaft was snapped, three pieces, a feather and a rod and an arrowhead, shiny black like the ship, like Loki’s knife. The edge bit into the ball of his thumb like butter. 

Wrist. Neck. Thigh.

Wrist was easiest. Neck was fastest, but hard to do right, hard to hit blood without drowning in it. Thigh was quick, too, but he’d have to aim through his pants or take them off. The idea of lying in this cave, half naked and bleeding to death, made him laugh.

Wrist it was.

Rolling up his sleeve stung like a bitch. He didn’t understand how something he couldn’t feel could hurt so badly. And he couldn’t—he couldn’t hold it _still_ , his arm, it kept flopping off his lap, he could hold it between his knees but not at a good angle and trying made spots dance in front of his eyes. He had to twist, pin it, against the wall, and hunch over, chin on his chest and now he couldn’t see and the arrowhead slipped from his fingers _god fucking damn it_.

He screamed. 

He wanted to die. He just wanted to die, that wasn’t too much to ask, for one thing, just _one thing_ to go right. It happened all the time, why couldn’t it happen to him?

There were fingers in his hair, and he was bleeding, his good hand raw and broken from hitting the wall over and over, the way he’d hit the honeycomb. They were cool, the fingers, sliding over his scalp, curving around the back of his neck like that was where they belonged. He buried his head in cotton. It smelled like winter. 

“I’m sorry,” Loki gulped, as if he had anything to be sorry for. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Clinton, I’m so, so, sorry, please don’t cry, it’s alright, I’m fine, see?”

He lifted up his shirt, showing Clint a scar he’d never seen, long and ugly down the center of his chest. Loki took his hand, the broken one that had been good, and pressed it against his skin, over his heart, beating so, so fast. 

“See?” Loki said with a smile that was scared instead of sad. “I’m alright. It’s just a scar. Please don’t cry, I hate it when you cry, I never know what to say.” 

Clint laughed.


	21. Chapter 21

The storm took a long time to die down. Clint didn’t mind. It gave him time, his head resting on Loki’s chest, fingertips tracing the edges of the wound that wasn’t there. His heartbeat thrummed in the back of Clint’s mind where the drone used to be, building back up what the hum had torn down. 

Loki didn’t speak. If he hadn’t known, if he hadn’t been able to feel the slight pause in his breath, the extra air he drew in and the sudden flutter of his heart, Clint would have thought it was on purpose. He _had_ thought it was on purpose, for a year and a half. 

Pale eclipsed light was filtering back through the entrance of the came by the time Loki worked up the courage. 

“Not to rush you, my love,” he murmured, smoothing down Clint’s short prickle of hair with long, deliberate strokes, “But the Einherjar will be here soon, and it would be a shame to have gone through all this for nothing.”

Loki helped Clint roll his sleeve back down, minding the scratches and cuts already turned to scabs, and Clint helped Loki to his feet. The bullet wound was obvious now, dried blood soaked through his pants and caked between his toes. The biggest problem, though, seemed to be his ankle, swollen and purple and so cold Clint could feel it radiating through the ashy air between them. 

The puddle of red Loki hadn’t died in wasn’t there when they arrived, but shimmered back into existence as Loki lay down, along with his armour and the hole in his chest Clint couldn’t bear to look at. Clint sat beside him, staring out at the horizon, Loki’s fingers ever so slightly tangled with his as the winged boat skimmed towards them.

The Einherjar took them back to Asgard, just as Thor had said. They asked him questions first. Where was Thor? Where was Malekith? Where was the Aether? He answered them—one or two words, without inflection, without looking at them, a debriefing of a bad mission with a superior he didn’t like. 

They did not ask about Loki. They looked him over, then loaded him onto the boat like a sack of potatoes. He thumped when he hit the metal.

If Loki had actually been dead, Clint would have killed them for that. As it was, he kind of hoped it hurt. 

Back in the palace, they carried Loki one way and led him another. He didn’t argue. He was sand, tumbling down a hill, flowing around every obstacle in his path and leaving stillness in his wake. 

There were healers. They bathed him in a golden light that took away the pain in his arm, his head, his ribs, but they did not speak. When they were finished, they brought him to the room with the glowing World Tree and left him there. No-one seemed to know what to do with him. 

He watched the galaxies dance. They were beautiful, swirling rings of stars in green and yellow and blue, flashing images of other worlds and other places he’d never seen. Woodlands, mountains of ice and fire, the dark sooty stain of Svartalfheim. Earth. 

Once, tendrils of red-black ink crept out from the tiny blue marble he called home, spreading throughout the realms like a cancer that consumed all the light it touched. He could hear shouts, distant voices echoing through the palace. He didn’t worry. He knew it would fade, soon enough, and it did.

Not long after that, he heard the mighty doors creak open, footsteps and clanking armour, the shuffle of capes and cloth and hair. 

“Beautiful, is it not?” Odin said, circling the great tree. “All the immensity of the Nine Realms swirling about like falling leaves.”

Clint didn’t bother to turn. “What do you want?”

Odin’s guard—Lady Sif, he realized—came forward, anger brewing behind her hazel eyes. Odin held up a hand.

“Leave us,” he said. When Sif hesitated, he said it again, the newspaper hitting home. “ _Leave us_.”

She did.

“I do not know what my sons see in you humans,” Odin said, after the bang of the closing doors echoed away. “You are weak and petty and rude. Then again, so can we be, at times.”

“What do you want?”

Odin’s jaw clenched. Clint waited. Like father, like son, after all.

“I had his body burned,” the old king said at last. “He died in battle, like a true Asgardian. He will feast forever in the afterlife, with all those worthy souls who came before. Such was his right.”

Clint almost smiled. Somehow he doubted Loki would find the idea of an eternity spent eating and drinking and listening to other people boasting heavenly. 

“I could not wait for Thor to return,” Odin continued, once more beginning to pace. “He would have insisted upon a prince’s funeral, and that could not be. Not for him. He was a traitor, a usurper. The Realms would never allow it.”

Clint finally looked at him. The thick white beard beginning to border on scraggy, the grooves on his face that were closer to scars than wrinkles, the gut his armour couldn’t quite hide. Just an old man, putting on a show.

“Who’re you trying to convince?”

A tremor rippled up Odin’s throat. He turned away, back to Yggdrasil and the galaxies in its branches, but Clint saw.

“My son,” the king said, the faintest hint of a quaver in his voice. “My son is dead. He died, long ago, the moment he let go of Gungnir and allowed himself to fall into the void. I mourned for him then. I will not mourn for him now.”

Clint sighed.

“What do you want?” he asked for the third time, filing off the harshness in a show of sympathy he wasn’t entirely convinced Odin deserved.

For a moment, Odin was silent. Clint saw his hands flex, one tightening around the wrist of the other. When he spoke again, all hint of the father was gone. All that remained was the king. 

“Thor was victorious. Malekith is defeated. The Nine Realms are safe,” he said, as if Clint didn’t already know. “You will be returned to Midgard. Thor will follow after you, once arrangements are made. He loves you and your world. I do not see why, but perhaps his eyes are better than mine.”

If that was a joke, neither of them laughed. Shoulders back, back straight, regal as the stars, Odin approached him, looking into his eyes for the first time with something other than disdain. 

“You claimed Loki was in your care. You failed him.” Odin raised a hand, shoving a pale wrinkled finger in his face. “You shall not fail Thor. Do you understand? He will come back to me safely, to rule when I am gone, or all the might of Asgard will rain down upon you until your precious Shield cracks and splinters into dust. _Do you understand_?”

Clint stared until Odin’s hand fell back to his side. It was hard to be afraid of a newspaper when you’d stared the devil in his baby blues and watched him die.

“Yeah,” he said. “I understand.”

Odin nodded. It was as close to approval as Clint could hope for.


	22. Chapter 22

He ran into Thor crossing the Rainbow Bridge. The Asgardian was bloody and bruised, dusty, exhausted, but when he saw Clint he gave a weary smile and clapped him on the shoulder. They didn’t say anything. They didn’t have to. 

Heimdall was the same as ever, huge and intimidating with his massive sword and his golden eyes. He dismissed Clint’s Einherjar escort with a nod and stepped up onto the dais.

“If you wished to hide from me,” he said, plunging his blade into the pedestal, “you should have chosen a different route.”

A shimmer of light appeared by Clint’s side, rippling not into the god Clint expected, but the man, dusty and bloody and still without shoes. 

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Loki smirked.

“Loki,” Clint asked, looking from his blood-caked feet to his storm-tossed shock of hair that still managed to put Hollywood to shame. “Why?”

Following Clint’s eyes, Loki shrugged. “You’ve seen me at my worst, and Heimdall can see through most illusions anyways, so I thought, ‘why bother’?”

“I was actually talking about the coming back from the dead thing, but okay.” 

“I kept your return secret once before, at my king’s command.” Heimdall twisted his sword, starting the bifrost spinning. “I shall not do it again at yours. I have had enough of treason this day.”

“I do not command,” Loki said, approaching the dais with his head tilted almost deferentially. “I ask, for his sake as much as mine. I cannot do what needs to be done in chains, or with Father’s ravens perched on my shoulder.”

Heimdall matched Loki’s stare, unblinking. “What you believe must be done is not always so, by my reckoning.”

“In the past, perhaps,” Loki admitted. “I do not ask for impunity. Tell Father, if a time comes what faith you have in me fails. Tell all of Asgard, if you wish. Merely give me a chance, for once, knowing that I have had many.”

Heimdall said nothing. Clint had to wonder exactly how far the watcher’s golden eyes could see. To Earth, obviously, or Odin and Frigga would have been as surprised as Thor was. Whether it went deeper, Clint couldn’t tell. 

Eventually, Heimdall’s cheek twitched. Loki seemed to take that tiny movement as agreement, stepping backward with a not-so-gracious smile. 

“I knew you’d see it my way.”

“I see it many ways,” Heimdall deadpanned, turning back to the burgeoning bifrost. “Know you will be watched, Loki Yearwalker, and by more eyes than mine.”

“Yearwalker?” Clint asked as the wormhole blossomed, blue and white and beautiful. “Then…”

“He knows,” Loki affirmed, sauntering towards the open bridge. “How could he not, with the tesseract burning a hole through time?” 

“But Odin didn’t know,” Clint said. “You didn’t tell him.”

“I did not,” Heimdall admitted. 

Clint frowned. “Why?”

Heimdall’s lips quirked up. “You, Clint Barton.”

“You might want to hurry, Clinton” Loki called. “Keeping the bifrost open too long can have somewhat adverse effects.”

“What do you mean, me?” Clint’s frown deepened. “Why would—“

“I’m not kidding. It’s less a bridge and more a Death Star which also doubles as a trans-dimensional sidewalk. Silly, I know, but a car is really just a bomb on wheels, so it’s not exactly unprecedented.”

Clint hesitated. Heimdall didn’t clarify, nodding towards the bifrost. Gritting his teeth, Clint loped to Loki’s side. The other man held out his hand, waiting for him to take it instead of scooping him up. Clint did. 

“Good luck,” he heard Heimdall call as they stepped into the blue. “You shall need it.”

Before he open his mouth to ask, they were gone.


	23. Chapter 23

The factory courtyard was just as they’d left it, minus the cars and the people and the rain. The police were gone. Sitwell and his team were gone. Even Jane’s car was gone, although there was a fresh scattering of broken glass and dusted spray paint where it had been. The sun was going down. Not far off, something was burning, spewing wisps of bitter smoke into the evening. The air smelled like Svartalfheim, but it didn’t _feel_ like it. This air was alive. 

Loki looked at him as the light of the bifrost faded. At first, he was smiling. Then, when Clint let go of his hand without meeting his eye, he stopped.

“Clint?” he said, only half a question.

Clint didn’t reply. Not yet. 

There was a trio of shipping containers in the center of the courtyard, two standing on end while the third balanced across one of the others like a giant steel Stonehenge. They looked high enough, just, to see over the rooftops around them. Clint walked towards them, then began to climb. The metal was warm under his fingers, rough in places where rust had taken hold and smooth in others where the red paint was still bright. As he pulled himself up onto the top of the sidebar, a warm wind ruffled his hair. He took a deep breath, and for the first time since Svartalfheim, he felt like he was actually _breathing_. 

As he perched on the edge, Loki clambered up to sit beside him. The roofs stretched out before them, the vast sea of undulating metal broken by chimneys and smokestacks and cellphone towers, all gleaming in the setting sun like a poor man’s Asgard. 

Loki didn’t press. Because he didn’t know what to say, or because he knew better than to try. It didn’t really matter. Maybe that should have bothered him, but it didn’t. 

It went both ways.

“Why do you call me Clinton?” he eventually asked, watching a seagull wheel through the sky.

Loki took a moment to answer, watching him and then speaking slowly, deliberately, like threading beads onto a string. “I’ve called you many things. You were Barton at first, and then you were Clint. I considered calling you Francis, but I put too high a value on my teeth.”

Clint huffed a laugh. “Good call.”

“It can be difficult at times,” Loki continued. “I wasn’t joking when I said I have trouble keeping things straight. One memory blurs into another, and I lose track of what I’ve done this time around, what I haven’t. Calling you by different names helps.”

“It can’t be _that_ helpful,” Clint said with another chuckle. “I stopped counting the number of times you called me ‘my love’ a year ago.”

The look Loki gave him made the laughter die in his throat. It wasn’t often that he looked straight-up sad, instead of the strange wistful melancholy of his smiles. Clint felt blood rush to his face and looked away, his fingers tracing over where the cuts on his arm used to be.

“I get it, alright?” Clint assured him. “I’m not him, ‘Clint’ or whatever you called him. What I did… I had a couple of concussions and a bad idea and… And I get it. After what I did I wouldn’t want me either.” 

“You know,” Loki said slowly, “every once in a while, you’ll say something incredibly insightful, and then you’ll say something like that and remind me exactly how idiotic you can be.”

Clint stared. Loki stared right back.

“I told you, ‘Clint’ and I weren’t always enemies, but we were never friends, and we certainly weren’t lovers. We fucked. We fought. We conquered the universe, but… I never saw you read. I never saw you cry, except for when I made you. And I never called ‘Clint’ ‘my love’. Not once.”

Clint’s throat closed. The fish, the blender full of frogs, all of it was back, and he had to turn his hands into fists to keep them from shaking. 

“But…” he protested thickly. “When I…”

“Hel’s halter, Clinton!” Loki cursed, rocketing to his feet. Clint scrambled backwards, pulling his legs against his chest as Loki began to pace the length of the container, no more than five long strides that only seemed to make the sudden tension snapping through his limbs worse. “You have _no idea_ , do you? No idea at all. You go along living your life and doing what’s _right_ , doing what’s _good_ , because tomorrow is just another day for you. You can do the hard thing, you can gamble, you can take the long shot because you’ll only ever have to do it _once_.”

Loki stopped, his back to Clint and his hands steepled over his mouth. The manacle scars on his wrists caught the light, paler bands through his pale skin, and his shoulders heaved in one ragged breath after another. Clint stood, slowly, and edged up behind him. His hand came up to touch Loki’s steel-tense back, but he paused.

“Do you have any idea,” Loki said, his voice tremulous and harsh, “how much you frighten me?”

Clint’s hand pulled back. It folded back into a fist, a tight press that left crescents on his palms. Then, it opened again, and curved over Loki’s shoulder as if that’s where it belonged. When he spoke it was a whisper.

“Yeah. Do you?”

Clint wasn’t sure what happened next, whether Loki sunk back against him or if he wrapped his arms around Loki’s chest, whether one of them dragged the other down or if they sank together, and he didn’t give a damn. All he cared about was that, when Loki’s tears came again, sobs came with them, and when he pressed kiss after kiss to his cool ocean-stained cheeks, Loki turned to plant a kiss of his own.

This one wasn’t the way he imagined. It was better.


	24. Chapter 24

They didn’t make love.

Clint thought they might, for a moment, Loki’s fingers raking through his hair and his own finding the edges of his shirt, ghosting up and under and sending gratifying shivers up Loki’s spine. He wanted to touch the scar again, to touch all of them, to press his lips against the beat of Loki’s heart and worry at the arch of his throat with tongue and teeth until all the fear went away and Loki was soft and wanting beneath him. 

But _can’t_ was _can’t_ , and for every gasp and moan there were two more sobs, and they were more important. So he gathered Loki in his arms, cradled him against his chest and let him cry in all the ways he hadn’t before, all the ways Clint had thought too young when really, they were just unused. The sun went down and pale moon peeked out through the thick London smog and in his head something clicked. 

There was only one Loki, and he wasn’t a god any more than Odin, or Thor, with his nosy assumptions and terrible piloting skills. They were men, just men, all of them, with mothers and brothers and sons, fears and hopes and masks that they wore to keep themselves safe. And there was only one Clint, a tiny little man with a tiny little bow he’d broken over the head of a thing that had almost brought Asgard to its knees. He’d saved Loki’s life. He’d helped save Thor’s. He’d helped save _everyone_. That was all he’d ever wanted to do.

Lying on his back, Loki curled around him like a cloak, Clint stared at the stars. He remembered counting them, right here, he realized, right now, arguing with Loki about which constellations went where. But that wasn’t the way things were. How they used to be, maybe, when Clint was Clint. Now Clint was Clinton, to Loki, at least. Stanley Heckdon could rot in hell. 

“Hey,” he said, pushing the hair away from Loki’s puffy tear-stained eyes. “I want to try something.”

“It’s Hercules,” Loki mumbled, turning into his chest. “Orion’s belt has three.”

“No, that’s not what I meant,” Clint laughed. Loki shifted, looking up at him, his eyes gleaming in the dark. “Let’s make some up.”

“Make some up?” Loki repeated, the raised eyebrow heavily implied.

“Yeah. Why not? There’s what, a hundred billion stars and eighty something constellations. It’s not like we’re going to run out of room.”

Loki paused, and for a second Clint thought he would say no.

“You just want to make up their names, don’t you.”

“Tell me ‘constellation Loquarius’ doesn’t sound cool. You can’t. Because it is.”

He felt Loki’s grin through his jacket and heard it in his voice; not sad, not wistful, not anything but amused and maybe a little wicked. “Thorpio.”

Clint grinned back.

They were up all night.


	25. Chapter 25

“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t court-martial you right here, right now,” Fury growled, pressing his palms against his desk and looming forward to look down on Clint with his one dark eye.

Clint shrugged. “Well, I helped save the universe. That should count for something.”

Fury’s glare intensified, but he sat down, brushing his coat out of the way with an angry snap of his wrists. 

“Maybe it would, if I’d _known the universe was in danger to begin with_.”

“That would have been useful information to have,” Clint agreed. 

Loki had warned him about letting too much slip. Loki had warned him about a lot of things. They’d ended up staying in London for three days, trying to work out how Loki’s new attempt at honesty would work. Clint hadn’t actually thought he’d follow up on it, figured it’d just been a quip to get him out of being an ass about Jane, but he was taking it strangely seriously. Although, when he thought about the way Loki kept glancing at his wrists, the way he found himself watching Loki to make sure he was breathing, it didn’t seem so strange after all. Secrecy hadn’t exactly been working out for them lately. 

Fury took a breath, then pulled a file out of a drawer and tossed it onto the desk. “Do you know what that is?”

“Well, it’s on S.H.I.E.L.D. stationary, so…”

“It’s the report Agent Sitwell filed saying you’ve been compromised. Is he wrong?”

Clint literally bit his tongue. There was another reason they’d stayed in London. If he’d had to share the same flight with the treacherous fuck he’d have thrown him out the airlock the minute they got high enough off the ground. 

“Sitwell… doesn’t have the best judgment,” was all he allowed himself.

Fury seemed to relax, his shoulders dipping down just a tad as if from a sigh of relief. Clint grit his teeth. He knew what he had to say. He just didn’t want to say it.

“But…” he eventually forced out. “No. He isn’t.”

There was no anger in Fury’s eye, no disappointment. There was nothing at all, just a blank canvas and that scalpel gaze. 

Clint had been trying to figure out exactly how to put this since he and Loki climbed down from the shipping containers, and for once the words came easy. “I joined S.H.I.E.L.D. because I wanted to be a hero, but that’s not what you needed. You needed an assassin. So that’s what I became. But hoping I save more people than I kill… It’s not enough. It’s never been enough.” Clint looked down at his hands, his calloused, bloody hands, clean as only a thorough quarantine scrub-down could leave them. “This last year, I’ve been trying to get my life together. But I’m beating on a wall. I can’t do anything trapped where I am. I’ve got to get out, before there’s no more battle to fight.”

At some point during his little speech, Fury’s expression had—not softened, exactly. He was a sheet of ice on the cusp of melting, a broken stone whose edges were only just starting to wear down. 

“Am I to take that as your resignation?” Fury asked.

Clint didn’t nod. “I’ll stay on until Project Insight launches. After that—“

“ _Insight_?” Fury’s eyebrow shot up so fast his eyepatch shifted. “How the hell—“

The realisation dawning over Fury’s face was glorious.

“ _God damned motherfucking time-travelling space wizard!_ ” The director flung his arms up in frustration, shoving himself to his feet and stomping around his office like he’d kicked a concrete ball. “How the hell’s a man supposed to keep up god damned operational security when there’s prophetic Norsemen all over the god damned place?”

Rubbing his nose, Clint bit back a grin. He’d actually first heard about Insight in the Triskelion cafeteria months ago, listening to a pair of programmers hashing out the details of the gunships’ targeting systems over lukewarm meatloaf. He hadn’t paid it much mind—the lunch room rang with such conversations, all day every day, and no one discussion let slip anything of value. Eventually, though, they started to pile up, and when someone came along to show you were all the pieces went, well… Then it was _easy_. 

Fury shook his head and sat back down in his chair with a _fwomp_. His fingers found a pen and he began to fiddle with it, spinning it around and around until his expression turned from frustrated rage to something in the ballpark of meditative.

“You know,” he said eventually, “I always knew we were going to lose you one of these days.”

Clint blinked. “You did?”

“Since you brought back Romanov. It’s why I told Coulson you were off-limits for his little Scooby Squad.”

For half a heartbeat, Clint couldn’t breathe.

“You—you did?”

“I told him you had more important things to take care of, which is true,” Fury said, placing the pen back down. “But really, I knew that when the time came for you to choose between S.H.I.E.L.D. and a friend, you’d choose your friend. It’s an admirable trait, but you’re right. It’s not what we need.”

Somehow, this revelation felt almost as massive as the ones Loki had given him. Coulson—Coulson hadn’t left him behind. He hadn’t passed him over. He’d been warned off. It hadn’t _bothered_ him, it really hadn’t, he’d _understood_ , but—a weight lifted off his shoulders all the same, a weight he hadn’t even known he’d been carrying. 

Fury watched him, palms flat on the desk, letting him have his silence for a moment. Then, when the moment was up, he laced his back fingers together and went returned business, as professional and unflappable as ever.

“Effective immediately, you’re out of the field,” he announced. “From now on, your sole responsibility is to find some other lunatic who can put up with Loki and get the two of them talking, whatever it takes. I am not losing my crystal ball. Understood?”

Clint nodded, wobbly at first, and then stronger. “Yes, Sir.”

“Good.” Fury grabbed a thin stack of papers and straightened them. “Dismissed.”

When Clint stood up, his legs felt a little strange. He didn’t feel quite _there_ , and walking to the door felt more like flowing down a stream. When he was about to go through it, Fury said his name.

“Agent Barton.”

Clint stopped and looked back at him. There was no smile on Fury’s lips, but there was a shadow of one in his eye. 

“You’ll come when I call,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

Clint nodded, and Fury waved him out.

His feet carried him down the hallway to the elevator, stopping him right in front of the glass with all the peculiar dim majesty of Earth before him. His breath fogged the window, hiding all the greens and blues and reds and whites behind a sheet of mist. He saw none of it. Not really.

He closed his eyes, and the building peeled away, walls and roof and windows, leaving him in the warm sunshine under the shimmering amethyst sky. The wind was soft, the air was cool, and the horizon went on and on and on. 

He took a step. And then another. And then he was running, racing across a rainbow bridge with no end, the earth soft under his feet and the stars glowing bright above him the way they had that night, Barney’s hand in his, only the road didn’t end at a circus, or at S.H.I.E.L.D., or at Asgard. The road didn’t end at all. He could run as far as he wanted, run and run and run and never stop, never fall, because the choice had been made. Whatever the consequences, whatever came next, he could handle it. He would handle it. And for the first time in as long as he could remember, he knew he wouldn’t have to handle it alone. 

A storm was coming. A storm, and a monster with a hundred heads. But Clint had gone up against monsters before. They were gone, and here he was, falling towards the future as fast as the elevator could carry him. 

Clint couldn’t wait.


End file.
